A time for silence, p.6
A Time for Silence, page 6
‘Well yes, but—’
‘Fact. Because the murder happened, we happened.’
‘Not necessarily. Mum and Dad met at college. They could still have done that. She’d have gone to college wherever she lived. The point is, there was once a family living there, in Cwmderwen, snug and cosy and happy, and then some murderer destroyed it all. It makes my blood boil.’
‘What makes you think they were snug and cosy and happy?’
‘It’s so small, they had to be snug and cosy. Nan must have been happy, mustn’t she? I want her to have been happy. I can’t even remember her properly. Can you?’
‘Not very much. She was a bit sad, I suppose. A bit like a woman whose husband had been murdered. Of course I didn’t know that. She was just the quiet one. You know Dilly, like a steamroller at warp five, barking her orders, sorting everyone out, and Nan was a little mouse, who smiled but never quite properly. Not with her eyes. Yes, I remember that.’
I detected a changing note in my brother’s voice, as he recalled the Nan he had known just that little bit better than me, being five years older. ‘Doesn’t seem fair, does it,’ he added. ‘She had a crap life, all round. Family on their uppers, and she lost a brother and kids and then there was Robert, and then Granddad Owen gets shot—’
‘And they lost the farm.’
‘And you’ve got it back. Well, good for you. Marcus understands about the murder, does he? Or is it just a cute cottage to him?’
‘Um. He doesn’t exactly know about it yet.’
Sam barked a laugh. ‘A little surprise to welcome him home?’
‘Something like that. He bought me a diamond solitaire; I bought him a cottage. Hell, he’ll love it. We did talk about a weekend place. Vaguely. Anyway, when Marcus realises that Cwmderwen is actually my family home, he’ll understand it all.’
‘He’ll have to.’
‘Must you be so negative?’
‘You’re the one not telling him. Don’t you trust him?’
‘Of course I trust him. That’s why I went ahead. We’ve had other things to talk about, that’s all. He’s loving it over there. And we’ve got the wedding to think about.’ I groaned. ‘Oh God, I was changing the subject. Get me off the bloody wedding.’
‘Ask Mum to step in? Mother of the bride. Isn’t she supposed to do the organising? I bet she could arrange something quick and quiet in Ireland.’
‘I can’t do that! Not when her own marriage was such a disaster.’
‘Disaster? Come off it, Sai. It wasn’t the sinking of the Titanic. It was just “one of those things”, as Mum says.’
‘Of course she says that! She doesn’t want to burden us.’ Maybe because I was younger, I’d been more attuned to the agony of our parents’ divorce.
‘Sai.’ Sam sighed down the phone. ‘There’s only one burden in Mum’s life. You. You’re the one she worries about. Dad’s the same—’
‘I don’t need anyone’s worry, thank you very much. I’m on track. I’m happy, I’m settling down, I’m engaged to a lovely man. I’m well-adjusted, I’ve got a successful career, I’m going to be a partner.’
‘Partner? Heh.’
‘I’ve told Trevor he’s making me one. I run the bloody place. He wouldn’t last a fortnight without me.’
‘Well, if it’s what you want. It’s just, I remember, when you first took the job with Frieman and Case, you saying it was just another stopgap while you got going. You could have made it as a singer, you know.’
‘No I couldn’t. That was fantasy. This is reality and I’ve got a perfectly worthwhile career.’
‘Writing captions instead of songs. One day your name will be synonymous with erotic fudge bars.’
‘I knew it was a mistake telling you about that. Yours will be synonymous with animated troll wars. Computer games! Call that a serious career for a grown man? If people want to worry, tell them to worry about you instead.’
‘I do, but no one listens.’
‘You make sure they don’t. You turn everything into a joke.’
‘Can’t see any good reason not to.’
‘Murder is not a joke.’
‘Give me time.’
What was I expecting? Sam was an eternal jester, not a caped crusader. Marcus, I knew, would be more understanding, maybe as intrigued as I was by the murder and the silence surrounding it.
Once Sam had returned to his jog, I turned again to the papers. Some old photographs, most of them from Peterborough or Leicester. A letter from Uncle Jack, where he mentioned, in passing, going to school in Llanolwen. A copy of my mother’s birth certificate. My grandparents’ marriage certificate. My old school work, the family tree with all I had of my past, until now. Births and marriages. Dates of death. Meaningless names neatly printed into an exercise book. But now the names were coming alive and the mystery with them. A mystery, a mission, something to strive for. Of course Marcus would understand it.
It would be such a relief when I told him. I should have done, right from the start. There were some things it just wasn’t healthy to bottle up.
6
A visitation from Castell Mawr of the greatest importance. William George’s bull is doing its duty. Not too difficult, getting a bull to do what comes naturally with a handful of cows, but it keeps the menfolk busy out there. That’s a relief, because Jack is being temperamental and Rosie is having one of her sluggardly spells. She is barely more than a toddler, but it is time she learned that life is not for daydreaming. No time for that when she should be concentrating on the simple tasks set for her. Lives in a world of her own, that one.
Gwen hates to be constantly cross and nagging, but John is determined that his children should be raised properly. They must grow up to be a credit to Cwmderwen, God-fearing, hard-working and honest, not given to play and idleness. They are not born to privilege like Master Philip and Miss Alicia up at the big house. They must equip themselves for an unending struggle through life, and John never ceases to remind them of it.
It is perfectly proper for a father to be strict. Children need discipline. Spare the rod and disgrace and ruin are sure to follow. But sometimes there is nothing Gwen would not give for some moments of respite from the battle to bend them to John’s will.
‘And what have you got to sing about, Miss?’ Mrs George, stately in her unforgiving corset and high-buttoned blouse, looks down on the girl as she pushes the peas she is supposed to be shelling round the table in a secret celestial dance.
Rosie, who has been crooning to herself, stops singing and looks up.
‘Well.’ Mrs George purses her lips. ‘There’s a time and a place for singing, young lady, however fine. Ask your father. Singing won’t get those peas in that pot.’
Rosie looks guilty, too young to appreciate what Gwen had come very quickly to understand, that Mrs George’s comments are rarely to be taken at face value. She must be gruff and judgemental because that is what the Lord and tradition require of a virtuous matriarch, but there is a compliment in her words somewhere.
She turns back to Gwen with a twitching of facial muscles that Gwen has learned to recognise as a smile. ‘Just like John for the singing, isn’t she? Now that’s a gift for Sunday School. All very fine in its place.’ She eyes Gwen with sudden suspicion. Gwen is leaning heavily on the table with one hand as she stirs the tea in the pot. ‘You all right, girl?’
‘Fine. Well enough.’ Gwen manages a flicker of a smile and begins to arrange cups.
Mrs George scrutinises her slight form as she turns. Her stentorian boom is lowered as befits indelicate matters. ‘Not overdoing things in your condition?’
Gwen does not need to lower her voice. It is always low. ‘I lost the baby,’ she says simply, and reaches for the milk jug.
Mrs George frowned. ‘When was this?’
‘A week ago.’
‘You saw a doctor?’
‘No need,’ says Gwen hastily. No need or no money, what difference did it make? ‘It’s all over now.’
‘Hm.’ Mrs George casts her eagle eye about at the immaculate threadbare kitchen. Not a luxury and not a speck of dust in sight. The dresser that has stood there, tended by Owen wives for three generations, might be too cumbersome for the room and lacking in becoming china, but it is polished to mirror brightness. The range is old and inefficient, and the pots around it black and battered, but there is not a stain or fleck of ash upon it. Mrs George approves and understands. Gwen is a woman who does her duty by her man, makes do, does not complain. A proper wife. And proper wives have trials that good neighbours must attend to.
She turns abruptly back to Rose who has, solemnly if slowly, resumed shelling peas. ‘Well, if you want to help your Mam, best get out from under her feet.’ She shoos the startled girl from the table and Rosie is more than happy to flee into the garden, away from duty and furtive adult mutterings.
Mrs George sits herself down and addresses the pea-shelling, as if she has come for no other purpose. She glances sidelong at little Jack. He is still too young to be sent packing, but then he is too young to understand either.
‘So, you were bleeding.’
Mrs George begins to ply Gwen with no-nonsense medical questions, which Gwen parries as best she can, hiding her discomfort. There are some things just too embarrassing to talk about and it is all over now. The physical symptoms were mild compared with the heartache, but that is not something she can discuss with Mrs George any more than she could discuss it at the time with John.
‘Well,’ he had said, when she told him, staring at the rain spilling down the window panes. Just that. Nothing more. He had shrugged on his coat and gone off to call in the cows. He had never been a man to voice emotion, she knew that. It was simply another blow from a God set on testing him like Job.
Mrs George continues cracking peapods. ‘Probably for the best. One baby after another, a woman needs a break. You’ll have another one on the way soon enough, no doubt.’
‘Maybe.’ Gwen cringes at the thought that Mrs George will begin to pry into even more unspeakable subjects. There is a side to marriage that Gwen can never do more than endure, though she does so without complaint. Men have their needs, she knows that. It is a pity that they cannot be gentle with it, but enough of that. However unpleasant, it has given her children, and though she is no sentimental and demonstrative mother, she can no longer imagine life without that blessing.
A blessing that can still burden and torment. Gwen stoops over Jack, wiping his nose. He is thumping the table leg loudly with a spoon and reciting garbled versions of nursery rhymes with repetitious intensity. Just such noise as John hates. She rescues the spoon and Jack pads across the room, then plumps down on the floor, rolling himself up gleefully in the rag rug. Hastily Gwen moves him, twitching the rug carefully back into place and he screams with laughter at her.
All for the best? Yes, Gwen can do with a break from the chaos babies create in a house where chaos is not permitted. What is a miscarriage but a blessed relief? It is not as if it has been the first, though the baby she’d lost after Rose was barely conceived when it gave up the fight. This one struggled longer. Grasped at Gwen’s heart as well as her womb. Gave her time to dream of…
No place for dreams. No place for sentiment or weakness. She can feel Mrs George’s approval, next best thing to sympathy. After four years at Cwmderwen she has earned an almost resentful respect from her magisterial neighbour. Her lack of emotion now is another point in her favour. There is reassurance in that.
Gwen needs to get the potatoes peeled and washed. No water. Mrs George intervenes before she can get to the pump. Not that Mrs George will do it for her. Mrs George has the world organised better than that.
‘William!’
William George ambles in promptly, sunny, smiling, under his mother’s thumb and happy to be there. Never one for quarrels or rebellion or upsetting the status quo.
‘Mrs Owen needs water drawing. Well, what are you standing there for? Make yourself useful, man.’
William obediently goes off to fill the pail. The biggest catch in the neighbourhood is William, with one of the most prosperous farms on the estate, and the cautious sense to keep it that way despite the bad times in farming. The Georges hadn’t rushed to buy their land like so many other impetuous souls, only to be burdened with crippling mortgages when things went bad. There’d been a few suicides because of that. But the Georges, William’s father and then William, have stayed careful and cautious at the helm, getting by when others crumbled, getting on when others were getting by. All the time ruled by Mrs George, Queen Empress of Llanolwen parish. A good catch William might be, and he might have been sweet on Evelyn Lloyd these last four years, but Gwen cannot see him leaping into matrimony just yet. Two queens at Castell Mawr? The very notion is unthinkable.
But married or a bachelor, William is a good neighbour, obliging, easy-going and impossible not to like.
He returns with John, for the clock is striking, and John acts by the clock, to the second. They stamp their boots clean on the doorstep.
‘Will you have tea?’ asks Gwen promptly. It is brewed and ready for the exact moment when he will expect it.
John accepts his cup and glances at Mrs George, still sitting with the peas. He frowns, with what might be a twinkle in his eye. ‘Have you been setting our neighbours to work then?’
You. Ti and chi. Their Welsh language defines their relationship in formal style. Gwen addresses him with respect, he speaks to her with masterly familiarity.
‘What are neighbours for if they can’t help each other?’ asks Mrs George gruffly. She is familiar with everyone except the Colonel and the minister, as befits her dominant position in the district. She has licence over all. So much licence that for an awful moment, Gwen fears that she will make some comment about Gwen’s condition, say something that will seem like a reproof to John. Her stomach turns cold.
But she need not have feared. Mrs George has too much respect for the traditional order of things. Though she expects to rule without question in Castell Mawr, she likes to see a man master in his own house. That is the way it should be. Not for one moment would she admonish him under his own roof.
John nods approvingly and drinks his tea, while the conversation moves on to Chapel talk and the Sunday School outing.
Dinner prepared, Gwen takes the peelings and peapods out to the garden. The sun, what there is of it, seems to be working in reverse. Instead of daylight, a shiver of dark weariness engulfs her. She is paralysed briefly by the sights and smells and sounds that greet her, all so familiar that most days she scarcely notices them. Lichen creeping up the scullery wall, the dark foetid dankness of the privy, the washing line and the cinder path running between rows of leeks and cabbages and potatoes, down to the apple tree. Sprays of Enchanter’s nightshade have clustered round the tree, seed heads brush against the wall where a few bluebells have daringly ventured in, but there are no flower beds here. She planted primroses once, but they were gone the next day. This isn’t a place for colour and perfume and all the foolishness of a dainty lady’s flower garden. It is a place for hard labour and dour subsistence, a place of penitence, overshadowed by the surrounding trees, the heavy dark dusty suffocating wall of oak and ash and holly, the smell of damp leaf mould and rotting timber. Her tomb.
She cannot breathe. Is there fresh air out there somewhere? She cannot remember; she seldom leaves this little world of hers. No time for rambles or casual visits. Her trips to Penbryn market are rare these days. John prefers to go alone, so she seldom gets to see old friends or even her family. She has Chapel every Sunday, and sparing grudging visits to the butcher’s and the little shop in Llanolwen where Miss Evans, tragic spinster because of the cruel war, keeps the Post Office. At best she can hope for an occasional visit to Castell Mawr or Penfeidr, farm business that brings her a little human contact, but otherwise this deep cwm is her horizon. The world stops where the surrounding trees meet the sky.
It is the memories that make it worse, memories of a time when she wasn’t so constrained. As a young woman she had got about, trips to Aberystwyth and Tenby, Swansea even, and occasional visits to the Picture House to see a wide, impossibly exotic world out there. Now Penbryn is the furthest she can dream of going, and that so seldom that the notion throws her into a fluster.
Only once since her marriage has she ventured further, the trip to Llangrannog last year, helping with the Sunday School outing. A great success it was deemed and the Reverend Harries was loud in her praises, but she will not go again. That one holiday of festive respite, of sun and sea and open sky, laughter and hymn singing is a ghostly dream now. There is so much to do, her health is not so good… and John had not liked it. He had not complained at her doing her part for the Chapel community, but he had not liked her going either. Abandoning her post, her place at his side. Better not try his patience by doing it again. Better stay here, where her real duty lies. So much to do, to keep her going, day after day until she is ground down forever into this dark damp earth.
It is the miscarriage, surely, weighing on her heart and mind, giving her these gloomy thoughts. She must pull herself together. No place for melancholia on this farm. No place for a sensitive wilting lady.
And no place for daydreaming children either. She must call Rosie, hurry her up to wash and make herself presentable. It is dinnertime and there is nothing John hates more than sloth. Rosie can be so tardy.
She looked around for the girl but cannot see her. A twinge of nervousness. How far has she gone, rambling into the woods? Please let it not be far. Rosie knows she mustn’t be late for her father’s inspection, for his catechism of her behaviour and tasks. John is so strict on such matters.
‘Rosie!’
Her voice, though raised, is swallowed up in the smothering silence of the woods. ‘Rosie! Where are you, girl?’
No response, no sound except scurrying in the undergrowth.
