Hosts of Rebecca

by Alexander Cordell

  “Not yet,” said Morfydd. “But give them time. A tollgate went up on Flannigan’s road last week and another’s going up on the road to Kidwelly. Wait till lime-carting time – cost more for the tolls than the lime.”

  “Eh, agitators,” said Mam. “God save me.”

  “And it is long past time somebody agitated. For where does the money go? On road repairs? Aye, on road repairs after it has paid a nice fat profit – on the backs of gentry or buying new plate for Church.” She jerked her thumb at me. “And here is a worker playing silk purses and sows’ ears and snobbing with people who are bleeding the county.”

  “Please do not refer to Jethro as sows’ ears or I will be having a hand in it,” said Mam.

  “Trouble is coming,” whispered Morfydd, tightlipped.

  “If it doesn’t you’ll soon fetch some,” I whispered, but Mam did not hear. She lowered the new backside she was putting on to Richard.

  “Too old I am for fighting, Morfydd, too tired to get hot. Been flogged enough, I reckon. I have a man in a grave and a son in transportation. The gentry have the whip and they use it. Leave it, there’s a good girl.”

  “This county is a bitch to nothing,” said Morfydd, rising again. “My brother gets seven years transportation for a rebellion against Queen and State but Killarney is joining him for poaching.”

  “Hush you when Grandfer gets in, mind,” said Mam. “And the rivers are owned by the gentry.”

  “The rivers are owned by God,” shouted Morfydd, swinging to her. “And by God we will have our share. Salmon are so thick at the Reach that Lloyd Parry can’t cast a fly in season, and the children of Killarney will grow legs like beansticks.”

  “Do not remind me,” whispered Mam.

  “O, Morfydd, shut it,” I said.

  “Shut it, eh?” She leaned, peering. “You ever seen a child die of hunger?”

  “Saw them back home,” said Mam. “No need to travel for that.”

  “With their bellies as balloons and the bread whooping up as fast as you push it down?” Morfydd straightened, and I saw tears in her eyes. “God, I have seen them – six died the week I came here and another three at Whitland a week after that – on the poor rate, mind – two shillings a week, with reverend fathers rooting round the sty for the last little chicken and hauling down the last scratch of bacon to pay Church tithes.” Colder now, her voice breaking. “God, I would give them God if I were God Almighty. Too much jolting on the knees has driven the Church loopy, the ministers in the pay of the gentry and the gentry in the prayers of the ministers – walking into the City of Judah seven days a week while helpless children starve. Eh!” Deep she sighed. “The trouble with hassock-bumpers is that they forget the poor and needy, but God’s people will remember them. Wait and see.”

  “Talking about chickens and bacon you’d better get the potato soup back on,” said my mother. “Grandfer and Mari will be in directly.”

  “God forgive you, Mam,” said Morfydd, eyes closed.

  “God grant me peace,” said my mother. “I cannot feed the county, I can only cast it from my mind.” Rising, she kissed my sister. “O,” she said, “afire was my womb when it brought forth you. Please God you find peace, like me.”

  And the door came open and Mari came in.

  “There is a miserable set of old faces,” she cried, smiling. “Tollgates again, is it?” And she danced in with her basket.

  “It is Jethro courting little Tessa and Morfydd handing hell to hassock-bumpers in the name of the poor and needy,” said Mam. “Come you in, girl – got anything decent?”

  And she looked at me and smiled, did Mari, bringing low my eyes.

  This was my sister-in-law, wife to Iestyn my brother in seven years transportation. Months he had been gone now, leaving her with Jonathon, her son. To this day I cannot explain the sweetness her presence brought me. Church of England, was Mari, from hooded bishops to gilded altars, and Christian. She blunted the edge of Morfydd’s fire, forgiving trespasses in her every word and glance. Four years the younger, I had once shared her kisses, till I grew a head the taller and too high for her lips. Now she winked.

  “At last we know why the boy’s off his food.” Eyes dancing, with her baby cradled against her now, and Mam reached up, taking him on her knee.

  “No laughing matter, Mari,” said Morfydd at the window.

  “O, come,” said Mari, hooking the door shut. “Do a little boy’s courting put the house untidy when there’s three grown women by here and not a man in sight save Grandfer?”

  “Daughter of a squire,” said Morfydd, gentle. In love with Mari, like me.

  “And crumbs on her mouth from her tea. O, girl, they are children!”

  “And not so much of the children,” said Morfydd. “Nigh twelve stone is that thing and hair on its chest. Before we know it we’ll be washing gentry napkins and I’m full to the stomach with gentry.”

  “And my stomach is empty and howling for supper,” said Mari. “Where’s my Grandfer?”

  “Black Boar tavern, as usual,” said Morfydd. “Drowning his sorrows – the house is plagued with drunkards and lovers.”

  “Morfydd!” said Mam sharp, but Mari only smiled.

  “Strange he should drink at a time like this,” said she.

  “He drinks because of a time like this,” answered Morfydd. “The man has lived alone for over half a century and we hit him up with six women and kids,” and she turned from the window as a shadow went by it. “God, here it comes.”

  Loaded was Grandfer, with only his staff to keep him upright; as a leathery little goat complete with beard and his little pot of a waistcoat tearing at its seams above his bandy, gaitered legs. Bald as an egg, toothless, he had been good in his time, said Waldo Bailiff, but cooled after sixty, and the more virgins he had around him now the holier he felt, something we were short of at Cae White.

  “Grandfer!” cried Mari, ducking his stick.

  Belching, drooling, the senility blundered in, taking breath to keep its quarts down, glazed in the eye, dragging its feet. Hobnails clattering it leaned on the table, wagging its head in grief.

  “Knowest thou the biblical? Ah, me!” said he. “Woe is Grandfer! The house is filled to the brim with suckling children and female Nonconformists.” He belched deep, begging our pardons. “Knowest thou the murmurings of the Israelites through the speeches of Moses? ‘Have I conceived all these people – have I begotten them that thou should sayest unto me, carry them in thy bosom as a nursing father beareth a suckling child?’ Eh, dear me! ‘I am not able to bear all these people alone because it is too heavy for me. Kill me, I pray you, out of hand, let me not see my wretchedness.’”

  “Amen,” said Morfydd.

  “A fine one to talk of the biblical!” said Mari, shocked. “He is not himself today, forgive him.”

  “Old and feeble, he is,” whispered Mam. “Do not take it hard, girl. A smell of the Black Boar pints and he is standing on his head.”

  “Not true,” I said. “He can sink twenty without breathing.”

  “You will speak when you are spoken to,” said Mam, eyes wide and flashing.

  “Leave Grandfer to me,” said Morfydd, taking his arm. “I can handle grandfers.”

  “Twenty years back you wouldn’t,” said he, leering into her smile. “Look upon her now, this vision of beauty!” Swinging wide, he fell into Morfydd’s arms. “The only woman among you with the spunk of a man. Rebecca and Chartist, a fighter for the rights of men – Venus reborn! Clear the house of infidels and varmints, especially God-forsaken poachers – may they soil themselves in their pits of iniquity, but save me Morfydd. Still got an eye for a pretty woman, mind, and I like them rebellious.”

  “Take him up to bed,” said Mari in disgust.

  “Will you take me up to bed, Morfydd Mortymer?” Evil was his eye.

  “As far as the landing,” said she. “You are not as old as I thought. Come, Grandfer.”

  Bride and groom left for the
bedchamber.

  “O, he is disgraceful,” whispered Mari, red and ashamed.

  “When the ale is in the wits are out,” said Mam, soothing. “But I know the truth of it, we should not be here. Too much to ask,” and she followed Morfydd to see fair play, leaving me and Mari alone.

  Tragic is the one who is meat in the sandwich. Oblivious of me she paced the room, her teeth on her lips, holding back tears. But more tragic still is the one to whom love flies and the longing to give comfort, but words are useless things between boy and married woman. I sat and longed and found no words. At the window now she picked up her baby Jonathon, hugging him against her.

  “I am sorry, Mari,” I said.

  A brush at her eyes, a flash of a smile.

  “With his tongue submerged he can still use it,” she said. “O, God, if only my Iestyn were here.”

  “He will come back,” I said.

  As stabbed she stopped pacing and swung to me. “O, do not take on so, Jethro!” Fingers at her wedding ring now, twisting. She did this when the talk was of Iestyn. “I see him in your face, your smile. Jethro!” She wept, turning.

  Up like lightning and she was in my arms. No ring, no Iestyn. Back even quicker to Morfydd’s clatter on the stairs. Strange the guilt.

  “Now, that is over,” said Morfydd, coming in. “A cup of decent tea, for God’s sake. Fought like a demon when I put him in his nightshirt – like the rest of the men, he is – all promises. Supper, is it?” She kissed Mari in passing.

  Nothing like a table for taking away gloom. And I think a house is happy with its table dressed in its white, starched apron and its spoons tinkling as people go past. Come from a gentry house, Grandfer’s table, serving rye bread and buttermilk now, but dreaming its past of silver plate and feasts; of crinoline gowns and fingers touching secretly in its curtained darkness. And pretty was the kitchen at Cae White with its great Welsh dresser standing in polished dignity on the flagstones, heavy with its scores of jugs and their sighs of a thousand cows. My women were beggars for the polishing, like most – flicking the dust from one corner to another, burnishing the brass trinkets for shaving in. The low ships’ timbers bore down upon us, the sea murmuring in their splits; faded wallpaper where the bed-warming pan flashed copper light; a painting called Lost was above the mantel, where a man of icicles groped in a blizzard. God Bless Our Home hung in laurel leaves next to the portrait of Victoria whom Morfydd had managed to crack. But best of all was that table made for a company of Guards. Grandfer, now absent, always sat at the top with Mari on his right and Mam and Morfydd on his left, with Richard aged three beside me and Jonathon in Mari’s lap. And at the end sat the ghosts – four empty places that my mother always laid – for my father and sister who had died up in Monmouthshire; Richard, Morfydd’s man who was shot by redcoats, and Iestyn my brother who was in Botany Bay. Only Morfydd railed at this palaver – let the dead lie in peace, she said, but Mam still laid the places. Strange are women who treasure the dust of memories, eating at table with dead men, sleeping with them in the beds. Strange was Cae White with its three longing women, their make-believe love-making, their intercourse of ghosts. And upstairs was Grandfer, hop-soaked to drown other memories, it seemed, puggled with his past.

  Me of the lot of them the only one normal.

  CHAPTER 4

  VERY STITCHED up are the Welsh when it comes to neighbours, till they know you. Most prim was everyone, bowing very formal when we went out for Chapel or market, and, being strangers, we were doing our best to make a good impression, though we were at a disadvantage with my sister Morfydd in the house. For it was not only rebellion that stirred in Morfydd’s breast, said Mam; at thirty she is old enough to know better. Most fanciful for the men, was Morfydd, with the lips and eyes that drove the chaps demented. I know that the loss of her man was unstitched within her but she still had an eye for trews. And it soon got round the village about the beautiful women at Cae White, one prim, the other improper. Very alike were Mari and Morfydd – could be taken for sisters being both dark and curled, lithe in the step and with dignity. Long-waisted, high-breasted, they swirled around Cae White, and the men were hanging on the gate like string beans for a sight of them, which shocked my mam, put Mari dull, and painted up Morfydd’s cheeks with expectation.

  “Willie O’Hara again,” said she, lifting the curtain. “Must be keen, see, in four degrees of frost.”

  “Shameful,” said Mam. “Down with that curtain this minute.”

  “And Elias the Shop all the way from Kidwelly. There’s a compliment. Did you invite him, Mam?”

  “No fool like an old fool,” Mam replied. “If my Hywel was alive he’d soon clear them.”

  “O, look now!” cried Morfydd. “Old Uncle Silas from the Burrows – coming very jaunty, too – life in the old dog yet.”

  “Let’s have a look, girl,” I said, getting up.

  “Back you,” cried Mam. “Objectionable, it is.”

  Pretty wrinkled was Uncle Silas; buried two wives and looking for a third, said Grandfer, and his eye was on Morfydd, strange enough. Every Sunday regular after Chapel he was pacing the end of our shippon with his starched collar round his ears and his bunch of winter flowers. Queer are old men looking for wives, for ten minutes with Morfydd my sister and anything under five-foot-ten went out boots first, I had heard. But Willie O’Hara, now here was a difference. Topped six feet, did Willie, big in the shoulders and sinewy, with mop-gold hair on him, strange for Welsh Irish. Come down from the industries, it was said, but not long enough in iron to be branded. And he leaned on the gate now, broad back turned, settling for a fortnight’s wait by the look of him.

  Lucky for me having my woman inside.

  The old log fire flamed red and cosy in the kitchen that night near Christmas. Sitting crosslegged before it I would watch Mari’s hands; long, tapering fingers white against the black braid of her dress, with her needle flashing through my dreams.

  “There now, that’s you,” and she flung me the socks.

  They landed in my lap but I did not really notice, for her eyes were staring past me into the fire and she took a breath and sighed, telling of her longing for my brother.

  “Irish potatoes, is it?” said she. “I know some good round Welsh ones. Easy on the socks, Jethro, you will wear me out.” She smiled at the window where Morfydd was standing. “Still at it, are they? Do not blame me, Mam, I do not give them the eye.”

  “No need to tell me who does that,” said Mam, treadling at the wheel. “Damned criminal, it is, when you have no intentions, and Dai Alltwen Preacher swimming the river Jordan every night down in the Horeb. God help you, Morfydd, if Dai finds out.”

  “Can’t let Willie starve,” said Morfydd, lifting her bonnet. “Solid ice he will be in another ten minutes. I will not be late, Mam.”

  “At this time of night? Morfydd, it is indecent!”

  “Now what is indecent in a bit of a walk?”

  “Nothing,” said Mam. It was the way she looked.

  “I am thirty years old,” said Morfydd, eyes lighting up. “Do I have to account to you for every minute?”

  “Every second while you live here,” replied Mam, sleeves going up.

  “At thirty I am past those damned silly capers!”

  “Count yourself lucky,” said Mam. “When I was thirty I wasn’t.”

  “Don’t do as I do but do as I say, is it?”

  “Morfydd, hush!” whispered Mari.

  “Do not be rude to our mam,” I said.

  “Quiet, you, or I’ll clip that damned ear,” said Morfydd, swinging to me.

  “And I will clip the other one,” said Mam. “But a boy, you are, and you will keep from this conversation. You will be back at eight o’clock, Morfydd, understand? Nine o’clock otherwise, but I do not stand for rudeness.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “And you keep walking with that Willie O’Hara, understand?”

  “O, Mam,” said Mari. “She would not b
reathe on Willie O’Hara.”

  Under judgement stands Morfydd and I gave her a wink.

  “You may kiss me,” said my mother, taking the wish for granted.

  Kisses all round except for me, and off Morfydd went under her black poke bonnet. I waited till she had gone then stretched and sighed.

  “And where are you off to, pray?” asked Mam.

  “Not in front of Mari, please,” I said.

  “I am sorry,” said my mother. “But do not bait your sister, remember.”

  Cold round the back with the stars all Venuses and the Milky Way dripping with cream in the frost. I whistled, and Morfydd paused, a black witch against the stars, and came back.

  “And what do you want, little pig?”

  “Back home at eight, remember,” I said. “Eh, there’s delightful, and Mam don’t know. Do not make a meal of it – tin drawers it is with Willie O’Hara, so watch it or he’ll have you.”

  “One word from you …” she whispered, her finger going over her throat.

  “Get on, get on,” I said. “He’ll be no good to you freezing.”

  She laughed then, head back, and ran to the gate. I stood there as she took Willie’s hand and he swung her down the road to Ferry.

  The wildness of her made me afraid, but I would not have changed her for any woman in Carmarthen, save perhaps one.

  Never in my life will I forget that first Christmas at Cae White; the service at Chapel with Dai Alltwen roasting the Devil up in the front pews, then back home, Grandfer leading, for he always reckoned on Chapel for Christmas Day. Back home now and I hit out a poor little chicken from the henhouse and plucked him and handed him to Mari who was cook at Cae White, and the smell of him was all over the house, with Jonathon crowing and Richard toddling around the kitchen for peeps at him on the spit. Blistering and browning he turns above the fire and the fat drips and flares. Up at Squire’s Reach they had a little dog to do it, says Morfydd; climbing the circle of the stepped wheel, panting in the heat, tongue hanging out, coat singed, shrinking to a prune for the lusts of humans. Wonder what the baby Jesus would say if he saw that little dog, I wondered, for I was sweating for two in the glow, with Mari dashing around with her spoons and pans, working herself to death for that Christmas dinner, our first meat since we came to Carmarthenshire, Boiled potatoes and cabbage and gallons of gravy, and she always made pints because she knew I loved it. If a woman can make gravy it is enough to ask of a wife, I think, and anything she has after that is only grist to the mill. The seven of us at table now, Grandfer going at the chicken and tongues wagging arid the boys banging spoons, with Mari scooping up the vegetables and handing down the plates, me last, though she fixed me with a leg while nobody was looking. Into it now, smiles all round, and isn’t it delicious and thank God for Grandfer who was enjoying himself for once. And there is nothing like a plate when a dinner is finished, I think, and you get the bread in a putty and wipe it round, making the old thing shine. Polished is a plate by the time I have finished with it, saving the washing-up if I had my way, but doing it under the eagle eye for I always sat next to Morfydd.