by Jenny Nimmo
‘I thought he’d lost his wits and must have shown what I thought because he put his arms so carefully round me and said, “Don’t cry, Betty, Evan is here!” He was so gentle.’
Betty Lloyd had never spoken about the past at such length. Perhaps it was because she had been able to sweep her daughter into the hours that still startled her when she remembered them. And now Nia, too, saw the fierce dead boy, and the gentle one beside, unable to cry.
‘He came again, often,’ Mrs Lloyd went on. ‘I don’t think his parents understood him any more. He came every summer. Long summers they were, and always hot, as I remember, and, this will sound heartless to you, but we didn’t miss Emrys any more.’
So Nia thought she knew all about Evan Llr. She’d heard his voice, seen his letter, knew his childhood. She believed she was armed against whatever it was that Gwyn Griffiths wished to save her from.
The weather broke at last. A wind swept down from the mountains and blasted arctic wet into the valley. Chimneys toppled and the trees flung ripe fruit and fading leaves over the sodden fields. The river rose and spilled into basements and back gardens. It had happened before and would do so again.
For two days, inky black clouds threatened with thunder. Roads became muddy torrents of debris. The wind screamed through pylons, snapped at hedges, gleefully toyed with loose bricks and litterbins. Traffic was diverted and Pendewi would have been a quiet place if it hadn’t been for the wind.
The prince still came, though later than expected, so the boys were into their noisy after-tea time, and Mrs Lloyd was busy with Nerys in the kitchen. It was Nia who answered the door. She opened it very slowly and carefully; even so, she was unprepared.
Evan Llr was tall, but not in uniform as Nia had expected. He wore a dark sweater and jeans and something flung round his shoulders in the manner of a cloak. His appearance caused a jolt in Nia’s mind and the reception she’d intended became disorganised. ‘Aw,’ she mumbled. ‘Is it . . . are you?’
‘Hullo!’ said Evan Llr.
And Nia could not reply to this because, in all her eleven years, she had never been alone with anyone so startlingly handsome. Black wing eyebrows accentuated a brilliant blue gaze; abundant black hair sprang away from fine aquiline features and the faintest of blue shadows echoed the long curves of his upper lip. Evan Llr was the prince from every fairy tale; he was fierce and kind – and immensely troubled.
‘I’m Evan Llr,’ he said.
‘I know,’ Nia opened the door wider.
Her prince smiled and Nia felt so small she wondered if he could really see her.
They stood a moment, regarding each other, a moment in which Nia came to know her cousin more intimately than in all the imminent hours of close conversation.
And she was still standing there, wondering at the intense and unfamiliar sensation when her mother came up behind her exclaiming, ‘Nia . . . Nia, what are you doing, girl? Let the man in . . . is it? It is, it’s Evan!’
And then the prince was walking past Nia, and there were boys whooping down the stairs, and her mother was bouncing like a girl and planting sugary kisses on the noble cheekbone.
Nia turned from these intimacies to close the front door and as she did so, noticed something black and bronze in the misty road, steaming like a tired beast. Such a car did not seem appropriate for a prince, but more the sort of vehicle a demon would choose.
She followed the company into the kitchen where her father gave Evan Llr his own seat at the head of the table. But it didn’t seem right that a prince should be sitting there, with clutter and crumbs still on the cloth, with sticky jars on the dresser and stained tea-cloths hanging on the door.
He seemed happy with his lot, however; a plate of stew piping hot and a glass of plum wine, the last bottle, kept specially for such an occasion.
Between mouthfuls the new cousin made up for lost years; counted heads, repeated names and asked all the questions expected of a long-absent relative. And although someone was missing he never mentioned it, but turned his head very slightly, now and again, to listen to the sonata that Catrin was playing in the room beyond.
No one could stem the twins’ eager curiosity. What weapons did a major use? How many men did he lead? When was he wounded and how? The soldier parried these questions gently, some he answered, some he left and then Gareth asked, ‘How many men have you killed, cousin Evan?’
And Nia noticed a sudden stillness fall about Evan. He seemed to depart from them. His fingers tightened round the cut-glass tumbler, then abandoned it. And he withdrew a shaking hand into safe shadows beneath the table.
‘How many?’ Sîon pressed.
‘Leave Evan in peace, boys,’ Mrs Lloyd said in what seemed to Nia a meaningless way, for her mother was beside herself with a sort of silly excitement.
‘You’re no different, Betty,’ Evan remarked, almost himself again. ‘Last time I saw you on the lane from T Llr you had a baby in your arms; its the same now, and you’re the same.’
‘Don’t tease, Evan!’ Betty Lloyd blushed, although she was a few years older than the soldier, and pressed her face into Bethan’s dark curls. ‘It’s ten years; Nia was the baby then.’
For a moment Nia had her cousin’s undivided attention and then someone came into the room behind her and took her moment away. Nia, watching closely, saw a hint of dismay and then confusion in Evan’s dark blue eyes.
‘And this is Catrin,’ Mrs Lloyd said.
Catrin walked into a space where the light was brightest. Her hair shone as though she had brushed it a thousand times, just for the occasion. But she looked nervous and unsure.
Evan smiled. ‘The musician,’ he said quietly.
‘Catrin took your message,’ Mrs Lloyd told him, ‘but she kept it to herself,’ and she immediately tried to make light of her remark by giving a diffident laugh.
She is aware of something, Nia thought, and so am I, and so is Catrin. We have changed, each one of us, but we won’t speak about it, not yet. All this happened before, long, long ago, it’s like a story being retold. But how are we going to find the way to a happy ending?
‘He’s come then, Alun’s soldier cousin?’ said Gwyn’s mother. She’d been toiling away at the new stove, a French contraption that did radiators and hot water as well as the cooking. Gradually, Glenys Griffiths was dragging her reluctant husband into the twentieth century.
There was a glass oven door in the smart new stove; you could see the bread, and it wasn’t rising. You couldn’t have bread, it seemed, as well as radiators.
‘He’s come,’ Gwyn said. ‘Alun says he’s not like a soldier. Won’t talk about the army, nor nothing like that.’
‘Just as well!’ Mrs Griffiths flung herself back into an easy chair. ‘I thought that storm would blow the heat away but it seems to be back, just as close, and it’s nearly October.’
‘He wants to come and see T Llr, this Evan,’ Gwyn said. ‘They’re bringing him up this afternoon. Think I’ll go and have a look at him.’
‘Have a look?’ his mother smiled. ‘Sounds like he’s a toy soldier.’
‘You know what I mean. Can I bring him back for some tea?’
‘How many? There’ll be no bread.’ Mrs Griffiths glanced ruefully at the oven.
‘Cake then. I don’t know how many. Maybe the soldier will want to stay at T Llr. He loves that place, Alun says.’
‘I remember him,’ Gwyn’s mother disclosed with a coy and unfamiliar expression. ‘A tall young man, quiet, with eyes like – the summer sea.’ Memories of Evan released the poet in her, it seemed.
‘He used to come and help the Lloyds at lambing time,’ Glenys continued. ‘He was good, too, up all hours, out in all weather, never complained. He didn’t get on with Alun’s dad, though, I don’t know why. He’d have been good on a farm, shame there was no place for him.’
‘Sounds drastic to be a soldier instead,’ Gwyn remarked. ‘Like going in the wrong direction.’
‘Well, he wa
s strange, too!’
Gwyn knew that. He’d heard the voice reaching into Nia’s home. ‘I’ll try and bring him back, then,’ he told his mother. ‘So you can look into his sea-blue eyes!’
‘Gwyn!’ Was it the heat, or did she blush?
‘It’d better be a grand cake,’ he teased and leapt away from his confused mother, closing the door against her muttered protestations.
He decided against walking down the lane. His grandmother might be in her front garden and he was still not ready for a discussion. So, feeling a little foolish, he walked through the farmyard and climbed the gate. The binder twine that secured the broken bolt took too long to unravel.
Wishing he did not feel so furtive and ill at ease on his own territory he walked round the back of the outbuildings and then downhill, through two fields of sheep. There was a shaggy little horned ram in the second field. He stared at Gwyn with his sharp hazel eyes and moved protectively along the ranks of ewes until the boy had left his field.
Gwyn scrambled over a drystone wall and dropped into Nain’s ground. The wild acre behind his grandmother’s cottage was choked with weeds; burdock and thistles scrawled round giant artichokes, cumfrey and green alkanet. None of this was accidental, nor was it a ‘crime’ as Iestyn Lloyd would have it. ‘It’s a prime bit of pasture and she’s let it go,’ he would complain. But Gwyn knew that every centimetre was planned, every plant known. Birds flocked to Rhiannon Griffiths’ fruitful meadow, bees found untainted pollen there, ladybirds thrived, rodents happily multiplied.
‘Everything has its use,’ Rhiannon would say, ‘and there’s a cure for all ills in the things that spring from the earth!’
And Gwyn knew that his grandmother was not mad. He also knew that none of her herbs would solve his problem. They would not help him to grow, nor stop the burning in his hands. He needed something else, something or someone?
He passed the copse of ash trees that separated the weeds from his grandmother’s more formal herb garden. The feathery leaves were already yellowing in the dry weather. Nain loved the ash above all trees. Gwyn dared not look towards the cottage, but couldn’t resist a guilty glance at the garden where he suddenly became aware that he was looking straight at his grandmother, who was staring at him. She’d been so still, wrapped in a green shawl and kneeling on the path, he hadn’t noticed her at first.
Gwyn started, then smiled. It was too late to run away. She didn’t speak, didn’t move.
‘Hullo, Nain!’ he said at last, and his voice sounded withered and unwilling.
His grandmother looked away from him. She was holding a trowel which she began to poke into the dry soil. When she spoke she seemed to be addressing the earth. ‘Snooping are we, Gwydion Gwyn?’ she said.
‘No, not snooping, Nain,’ he said.
‘Why didn’t you come to the door, then, instead of lurking in my ground like a thief?’
‘I wasn’t lurking, Nain. I was just passing,’ he said huffily. He felt silly peering through the sprays of coloured leaves.
‘I see. Not coming to see me, then!’
‘Well . . .’ he shifted from one foot to the other.
‘So run along, then,’ she said coldly. ‘Don’t let me detain you from your urgent business.’
All at once Gwyn felt that he should speak to his grandmother.
It wasn’t pity that led him to her at last. He went to seek her advice, to arm himself with a little of her ancient wisdom before facing the owner of that dark and worrying voice.
He sidled past the trees and walked up the path. When he was standing beside her he said, ‘I’m going to see that soldier.’
‘Soldier?’ She was too obviously casual to be uninterested.
‘You must have heard,’ he said. ‘The Lloyds’ cousin. He was wounded, in Belfast.’
‘That one!’
He could tell, in spite of her digging away at the earth, that she was profoundly interested. ‘D’you know him?’ he asked. ‘He came to T Llr, when he was a boy, Alun says. Says he’s not much of a soldier neither, though he’s a major and won medals.’
‘Poor creature,’ Nain said.
‘Poor creature?’ he repeated, surprised.
‘That one, that soldier. Poor injured soul.’ She shook her head.
‘Why poor, Nain? He’s better.’ Gwyn was intrigued. What was she on about now?
‘Is he better? Is he?’ She turned for the first time and darted a fierce black look up at her grandson. ‘Why has he come here, then?’
‘To recover. There’s no mystery!’ He wished he could believe that himself.
‘But why here, eh? After all this time?’
He wasn’t sure whether she expected him to know the answer or was trying to kindle an interest. Couldn’t she tell that he was already on his guard? ‘His relations are here,’ Gwyn explained.
‘It’s not so simple, Gwydion Gwyn. It’s not just his relatives. I know that man. And I knew he’d come back, to finish a story. Perhaps you can help him.’
‘Me?’ He was genuinely astonished.
‘Of course, you. Who else? You’re the magician.’
‘Oh, Nain, don’t . . .’ he groaned and kicked at the pebbles on the path.
‘You can’t just shake it off, boy. You’re a magician. I’ll shout it. Nothing you can do will unsay it.’ Nain stood up and clutched at his shoulder. She was such a tall woman. He felt buried in her shadow. ‘Listen, it isn’t my fault. I didn’t make you what you are. I just woke you up. And weren’t you pleased, Gwydion Gwyn, when you discovered your power, and didn’t it bring you joy to see your lost sister, and to save your cousin Emlyn with a spell?’
‘Yes, yes!’ He shrugged her off and turned away. ‘But I don’t want it any more, see! I’m sick of it. It’s making me tired!’
He began to run towards the trees but when he’d passed through the copse and couldn’t see the tall figure on the path, the words he’d meant to keep to himself burst from him. ‘I want to grow,’ he cried and he tore through the wild acre as though every second he spent there would diminish him further.
But as he broke free of the giant weeds and tumbled on to smooth-cropped grass he heard a voice sing-songing after him. ‘You will grow, Gwydion Gwyn. You will, I promise you!’
He believed his grandmother, as he always had and always would, and rushed down towards the T Llr fields, feeling lighter and more hopeful than he’d done for many months.
Ivor Griffiths now farmed the land that had once belonged to the Lloyds, but the ancient farmhouse was owned by Idris Llewelyn, the painter. The chapel where Idris worked was too small for his growing family and ever since the fire there, four years earlier, his wife Elinor had refused to live in the place. Elinor and Gwyn’s mother were sisters and Gwyn now considered T Llr a second home. Nia, too, used it as a refuge; the only house where she felt truly at peace. In fact there was an embracing atmosphere about T Llr that suggested it had been the site of a well-loved home even before the present farmhouse had been built. And so it had become a meeting place, where children from three families would come to find each other and discuss their problems.
A stream ran past T Llr; a wild, rocky stream of clear water that sprang from the mountain summit and spilled in a silvery torrent beside the lane until it found the Lloyds’ old farmhouse, perched on its granite rock, and there the water, seeking an easier passage, found soft shale that allowed it to meander gently round the back of the farmyard. The bank, here, was formed from the roots of willow and alder, it was an untidy network that twisted and curled into the riverbed.
Gwyn found Evan Llr sitting on a wide rock, his feet supported by the trellis of blanched roots, with Nia and Iolo either side of him. The man and the boy each held a string with a polished conker tied to the end. The conkers flew on their strings, they spun and cracked while the soldier issued instructions. ‘Keep the string short, Iolo! Hit it on the top, now. Harder! Ah, you’ve got me!’
Iolo laughed and Nia smiled; she watched
the soldier, not the battling conkers, Gwyn noted. And then she saw him and exclaimed, ‘It’s Gwyn!’
Gwyn faced the group across the stream. The soldier looked up, lifting his hand to shade his eyes from the sun. ‘So you’re Gwyn Griffiths,’ he said and there was nothing in his voice except a gentle curiosity.
Gwyn stepped into the stream, and the current pushed against him, little billows of shining spume lapping round the top of his boots.
‘It’s deep there,’ Nia shouted. ‘You’ll get your socks wet.’
But Gwyn took his time, feeling for the smooth higher pebbles with his feet. He paced slowly through the stream, watching his step, aware of a sea-blue glance marking him out, until he came within a metre of the bank and then he stopped and looked up at the trio.
Evan Llr regarded him eagerly, intrigued and puzzled and, for a moment, Gwyn was thrown off his guard because the soldier’s smile was so truly welcoming. And then he remembered the voice that had snaked through the air, repelling the same three people who now found its owner so irresistible. And Gwyn sensed a terrible contradiction. He was in the presence of something utterly unfamiliar. There was an emptiness about Evan Llr, a fearlessness that had nothing to do with courage, and it betrayed the kind and gentle smile.
Does he know who I am? Gwyn wondered.
‘Here!’ The soldier held out his hand and Gwyn accepted it. There was no warmth in the soldier’s flesh, it was smooth and dry and his touch sent a tiny circuit of pain trickling through Gwyn, like a ghost. It was so fleeting Gwyn did not even gasp, but the soldier’s hand tightened round his own and he was sure Evan knew what had happened between them.
‘Don’t fall,’ the soldier said.
And Gwyn replied, ‘It’s my boots, they’re slippery!’ And as he clambered up beside Nia’s cousin, he was baffled by a sense of being quite alone with Evan, in a place where giant trees replaced the hedges and a midnight cloud obscured the sun.