In Two Minds

by Alis Hawkins

  She looked me in the eye. ‘Ruth Harris, Banc yr Eithin. Teff’s wife.’

  I’d been half expecting it. ‘And she’s disappeared, hasn’t she?’

  ‘Disappeared?’ From Bets’s surprise, that was the first she’d heard of it.

  ‘Hasn’t been seen in nearly two weeks.’

  ‘Well, somebody’s seen her now. Dai’r Bardd – that’s Obadaiah Vaughan.’ She looked at me to check that I knew Vaughan’s nickname. ‘He came down to Gwyn Puw’s earlier. Stuck his head in here to say she was back.’

  ‘Why would he do that? What’s Ruth Harris to you?’

  Bets pulled the kettle off the range with a pot-holder and poured a spoutful into the teapot on the side. ‘My mother’s got a contract with Teff. For the lime-hauling. With him not here, she’ll want to give Ruth the option of carrying it on.’

  ‘D’you think Mrs Harris would want to?’

  Bets raised a nicely-shaped eyebrow. ‘Most likely. Need the money, don’t they? And Ruth Harris won’t have any trouble with the gang her husband recruited. She can get men to do things. Especially–’

  She stopped but I knew it was only so that she could let me get it out of her. If she hadn’t meant to tell me she’d’ve held her tongue. She’d’ve had plenty of practice at that around her mother.

  ‘Especially who?’ I asked.

  ‘Well,’ she gave me a sly little smile. ‘Let’s just say that I’m not surprised it was Dai’r Bardd who came to tell us she was back.’

  When I went back out into The Ship’s main room carrying two cups of tea, Mrs Parry was sitting in front of the inglenook, her back not three yards from the kitchen door, calmly smoking a pipe. The door wasn’t exactly thick – how much had she heard? I had to assume she’d heard everything, including Bets’s suspicions about her designs on Jenkyn Hughes. But, from the look of her, I was the embarrassed one.

  ‘Bets helpful, was she?’

  I kept my eyes on the cup as I passed it to her. ‘Yes, thank you. Could I have a few minutes of your time now?’

  She took the pipe out of her mouth and leaned forward to rest it against the coal bucket. ‘Sit down then.’

  I turned my back on the last rays of sunset and sat in the rocking chair by the fire. ‘We’re still trying to work out when Jenkyn Hughes was killed,’ I started. ‘You last saw him two days before you left The Ship – was that here or in Cardigan?’

  If she’d last seen him here, in Tresaith, there was always the possibility that he’d never left, that he’d been killed soon after.

  ‘Here. He was staying overnight before doing a trip to sign papers with some families. For the Ohio scheme.’

  ‘So he stayed here and then went off the following morning?’

  She lifted one eyebrow at me. ‘The Ship’s an inn, Mr Davies. We have plenty of rooms for people to sleep in.’

  So, she had heard everything Bets said.

  ‘Of course. Did you happen to see him ride off?’

  ‘No. I saw him walk out of that door there,’ she nodded at the front door, ‘and go past that window at the front. He was walking up to Hendre. That’s where he had his horse – in Hendre’s stable.’

  ‘Do you know whether he ever got there?’ I asked.

  She shook her head, eyes still on me. ‘No. You’d have to ask Matthew Davies.’

  ‘He’s the tenant at Hendre?’

  She nodded.

  I needed to go and speak to him, see if Hughes had picked up his horse.

  ‘You said, earlier on, that Hughes was a gambler. Do you know who he was gambling with?’

  She returned my stare without heat. ‘Sailors.’

  ‘Just sailors?’

  ‘That’s who drinks in smwglins as a rule.’

  I remembered David Daniels’s reference to ‘gentlemen’ and James Philips’s silence. ‘Is Mr Philips a card player?’

  Mrs Parry smiled as if she could read my mind and found it more interesting than she’d given me credit for. ‘James is my business partner, Mr Davies, not my husband. If you want to know his vices, you’ll have to ask him.’

  There was something about that smile of hers. It warmed you. Made you feel more of a man.

  ‘One more thing, if you don’t mind. The lime boats. There were two loads delivered while you were away, is that right?’

  She blew on her tea. ‘It is, yes.’

  ‘And Teff Harris was contracted to bring men in and cart the stone up the beach.’

  She took a cautious sip. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Is it all there?’

  She frowned and leaned forward slightly, resting her elbows on her thighs like a man. ‘The lime? You’ve seen that great pile out there, John Davies. There are dozens of tons. Scores. I’ve got no way of knowing if it’s all there.’

  I considered this. ‘What about the coal? The coal that Mr Hughes was bringing up from Pembrokeshire to fire the kilns. Where was that stored?’

  Her eyes narrowed. She could see what I was getting at. ‘On the landward side of the limestone. And, before you ask, that’s not all there – I do know that.’

  I already knew that. The previous day, Bets had said there was only cheap brown coal outside. ‘You’re missing the anthracite?’ I asked.

  Mrs Parry nodded.

  ‘Maybe Mr Hughes got a better price elsewhere and was going to bring in more for you?’

  ‘No. He knew better than that. I’d paid half in advance. He wouldn’t’ve gone back on a deal with me.’

  ‘Then where is it? All I’ve seen is brown coal.’

  She nodded and leaned back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other, as if she was wearing trousers, not a betgwn. ‘That’s the question, isn’t it?’

  Harry

  From some previously unsuspected store of such things, Mrs Griffiths produced a camp bed and suggested that I lie down and rest my eyes, even if I could not sleep. I was sincerely grateful for the gesture but, once I had closed the door behind her, I returned to the chair at my father’s bedside. The brandy I had consumed earlier had cured me of my restlessness and, if I could not keep my mind steadfastly on my father, the least I could do was to remain awake at his side.

  I stretched my legs out and let my thoughts return to John. Would he be able to find the man who claimed to be Jenkyn Hughes’s cousin? If not, I had a plan to root him out: a meeting of all parties with an interest in the Cardigan-Ohio Emigration Company. Hughes’s death and the resulting need to appoint a new agent could be explained to the would-be emigrants, the security of bondholders’ investments made clear, and any payers-by-installments could be asked to provide proof of their deposits. I was confident that the self-proclaimed cousin would see such a meeting as the ideal opportunity to present himself and lay claim to any interest he had in the business.

  My mind occupied with planning the meeting, I was brought up short when I caught myself making a mental note to ask my father whether the magistrates would allow it to be held at the Shire Hall. That habits of mind could be so engrained as to allow me to formulate such a thought whilst sitting beside his stricken form astonished me. It was as if I had two, quite distinct levels of awareness – one for the habitual, routine aspects of life, the other for more active thinking and planning – like an efficient private secretary and his lively-minded employer.

  Did such a state of affairs truly exist? Was that what lay behind our ability to feel that we were ‘in two minds’ about something – the phrase representing a confusion which arose from a difference of opinion between the conscious, spontaneous mind and the hidden, private secretary-mind?

  Reckitt would, no doubt, have an opinion and, indeed, the case of the patient whose unfortunate encounter with a steel rod he had described to me suggested such a dichotomy. Had the destruction of parts of engineer Phineas Gage’s brain left him in only onemind? Reckitt had described a transformation from shrewd, affable and reliable to surly, taciturn and erratic. The injured man had been no longer Gage. Had the affable a
nd surly elements of his personality always co-existed, the more acceptable imposing itself, in the whole brain, on the less?

  Eyeing my father in my peripheral vision, I allowed myself to consider the possibility that, if he were to regain his senses, he might no longer be himself.

  Unless he recovered from the paralysis described by Prendergast, he would look different, that much was certain. But, not having seen my father for the three years during which my sight had deteriorated to its current extent, I no longer knew exactly what he had looked like before the stroke. Had he begun to acquire the androgynous look of the very old? Had slackening muscles and sagging skin fallen away from the steady firmness of virility towards something softer, less insistently masculine, the second childhood of senescence rendering his countenance as genderless as a baby’s?

  More resolutely than before, I put my hand on his chest. This time, though I could not feel the rise and fall of breath, I felt the small pulse of his heartbeat beneath my palm. It seemed such an insignificant movement, like the beating of a tiny fist against the inside of his chest, rapping out the insistent iambic of existence – a-live, a-live, a-live.

  Until Reckitt had tried to explain the consequences of the fatal blow to Jenkyn Hughes’s head, I had not grasped that the brain regulated the workings of the internal organs. Without consciously thinking about it, I believe I had envisaged the heart, lungs and other viscera going about their business of their own accord. Of course, my friend Henry Gray, these days an anatomist of some note, had talked endlessly about the brain and spinal column and nerves, but I had come away with the idea that nerves were for executing movement and supplying us with sensation. That the heart required nervous instruction to beat had come as a revelation.

  Did those unacknowledged instructions arise in that unobtrusive private secretary-mind which did not answer to logic and reason but which, nevertheless, had a wisdom that was all its own? The mind that, governed by habit, had not yet learned that it could not ask my father whether Shire Hall could be used by the coroner.

  These thoughts caused me to wonder, somewhat despondently, whether mankind was quite the rational species we congratulated ourselves on being. Perhaps, even in the best of us, some of our actions were not governed by reason at all. The philosophers tell us that our passions can be controlled, tamed by reason but, in the reflective mood I had fallen into, I was obliged to acknowledge that my own experience had suggested otherwise.

  Once, in the grip of romantic love, I had knocked a man to the ground, stood over him and defied him to call the virtue of my beloved into question a second time. Given that he had been a head taller than me and half again as heavy, that had not been a rational act. Indeed, rationality had not entered into it. I had heard the insult and, the next thing I consciously knew, I was standing over him, my fist still raised, heart pounding. Had I held a weapon in my hand, I cannot say with any certainty that I would not have hit him about the head.

  Could that have been what happened to Jenkyn Hughes? Had somebody snatched up a weapon and hit him with it before their rational mind – their right mind – had a chance to understand what was happening?

  I pictured Hughes’s body, dragged up the beach by its heels and lying on the floor of the draw-hole, a figure shoveling lime waste over it until it was completely covered. Had that burial been the action of a man panicking at the result of a moment of utter irrationality? Or the calculated act of a murderer concealing the evidence of his crime?

  John

  I should’ve slept like the dead that night. I’d been up since before first light and riding over half of south Cardiganshire all day. But I never slept well away from home.

  Back and forth I rolled, twitchy and uncomfortable. I swore as bedclothes twisted themselves around me. Got in a stew about sheets that were still clammy hours after I got into bed. Wished I had my nightshirt and wasn’t lying in my underlinen. Changed the side I was lying on for the twentieth time. Hit the pillow to get the clotted feathers out of their lumps. Longed for sleep or morning and didn’t care which.

  I cursed myself for staying at The Ship instead of going back to Newcastle Emlyn. But it’d seemed like a good idea to take Seren up to Hendre and kill two birds with one stone – stable for the night and a short conversation about Jenkyn Hughes and his horse.

  I should’ve gone home after Hendre. That would have been the sensible thing to do. Go home to my lodgings. Visit Harry on Sunday.

  I banged the pillow again, lay down, and stared up into the dark. I felt stupid about being so excited earlier. Stupid to think I could carry on by myself. Harry was going to be at Glanteifi with his father for days – weeks even. He was the heir, he had no choice. He’d have to pass his duties on to another acting coroner. Rushing about the countryside wasn’t going to do me any good. Nobody was going to be impressed. Mr Schofield would soon hear about Justice Probert-Lloyd having an apoplexy and he’d expect me back at work. None of this was my responsibility any more.

  So what was I doing here?

  I wasn’t Harry.I was the monkey, not the organ grinder.

  But still … Matthew Davies up at Hendre’d answered my questions happily enough.

  Yes, Jenkyn Hughes had come for his horse.

  Yes, they’d had a bit of a chat. Mr Hughes was a friendly gentleman. Bit over-friendly if I wanted to know the truth.

  Where he’d gone?

  Cardigan.

  Not up the coast, then? Not to Aberaeron?

  No. He’d said he was going to Cardigan.

  Maybe he’d changed his plans?

  Perhaps. Wouldn’t be the first time.

  I squirmed around the mattress, trying to find the warm dent I’d been lying in a minute before. This was useless. I was fooling myself. Tomorrow, I’d go and see Harry. Tell him I was leaving all this and going back to work. To the law.

  I knew how he’d be. Of course, John, it’s your decision … But I could see the look of disappointment on his face already.

  Damn him, what was I supposed to do – put my whole future at risk? And why was I feeling guilty about letting him down when he’d let me down just as badly?

  Probert-Lloyd and Davies, Attorneys at Law. A solid, bow-fronted property. Two grand offices, one on each side of the hallway. Clerks knocking on our doors. ‘Mr so and so to see you, Mr Davies.’ ‘Mrs whatshername to see you, Mr Probert-Lloyd.’

  I’d built and furnished that office so many times in my mind. The pedestal desk. Rugs on the floor. A comfortable leather button-chair for clients. Gaslights on the walls. Why not? In my imagination, Newcastle Emlyn could have a gasholder.

  Probert-Lloyd and Davies. Huh! At this rate I’d be lucky if Mr Schofield kept me on as his clerk. I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to put up with much more of this running about after Harry.

  You may find that it is not entirely beneficial to your future to fall in behind his standard. There is such a thing as taint by association.

  And yet … Mr Leighton Bowen must think differently. He was the coroner for the Teifi Valley – even if he was too sick to do the job – and he’d passed the post on to Harry. Which implied two things. One, he trusted Harry to do the job competently. Two, he thought it was a fit occupation for a gentleman.

  But, gentleman or not, as of the previous day, Harry wasn’t doing the job. I was. And there was a big difference between I hear your clerk’s assisting young Probert-Lloyd as stand-in coroner and I hear your clerk’s acting on his own initiative, let loose by young Probert-Lloyd.

  There was something else, as well.

  I try not to believe in fate. It’s just a sop for people without the sense to plan for the future. But there was something about this investigation that was making me shiver.

  America. Death.

  America’d been the reason I’d gone for a gwas bach on Price’s farm when I was eleven. My parents’d put me in service so I’d get board and lodging, plus a suit of clothes and a pair of boots, and – just as important – sixpence a w
eek put by. One pound and six shillings a year. That would have paid for my ticket.

  But I’d never collected any earnings. After six months, I’d run back home in fear of my life. Except there’d been nobody there. My father, my mother and my little sister had all died of an infectious fever weeks before.

  I lay still and stared up into the thick darkness above me, listening to the sound of the waves down on the beach. What would my life’ve been like if we’d gone to America?

  My father would’ve wanted me on the land with him. No doubt there. But I’d never been cut out for farming. Even when I was small, I always preferred being indoors to out and, when I went to the Sunday school, I’d taken to reading and writing like a terrier takes to ratting.

  What would my father tell me now? Who should I stick to – employer or squire’s son?

  With no shutters, the window was a pale square floating in the dark and I fixed my gritty eyes on it. Out there was the sea. All the way to America if you managed not to bump into Ireland first.

  Until I met Harry, I’d never seen the sea. Only the estuaries at Cardigan and Carmarthen. Never waves and sea all the way to the horizon.

  Tell Harry you’ve changed your mind. That you’ll work for him. Be his assistant.

  I turned away from the window and stared up without blinking until the blackness pulsed and flickered. If we didn’t find out who’d killed Jenkyn Hughes, Harry could whistle as far as getting elected coroner was concerned. If I wanted even the possibility of being his officer again in the future, I couldn’t afford to let him down.