Hosts of Rebecca

by Alexander Cordell

  “We passed her coming in,” I said.

  “Aye, well I sent her up the switch to see to my Bronwen, for the tears of a child is the grief of angels. Right now, do not sit around. Kneepads, handpads, pick – down and get towing, girl, or we will not enjoy the Sundays.”

  Stripping to the waist I joined him in the props. Morfydd waited till Meg Benyon got back with her empty tram, and she harnessed up to the one I was filling. Down on all fours she went between the rails, heaving.

  “Good little tower, though,” said Liam, eyeing her. “She done it before?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “She conceived?”

  “She is single,” I said.

  “Safe she will be on Muldooney’s shift though, and she is safer on towing than them dirty old ladders, so shift you over and do not be fidgety. Would you hear again about my dad?”

  So we started in coal, Morfydd and me, at Ponty.

  CHAPTER 8

  FOR A year me and Morfydd had laboured with Muldooney for the first summer had been drenching and most harvests failing, and Grandfer was not keen to have me in the farming, though he did precious little of it himself.

  But this spring had been glorious, with the countryside melting early in the quickening sun, and even the weeping willows on the banks of the Tywi were laughing and the lanes from Cae White fluttering white with blossom. Hedgehog Grandfer, yawning and stretching from his hop-winter sleep, rose up in April, and belted and buckled he fair bounced round the place. Even Mam came from mourning, dainty with lace from the money coming in. Mari had grown new smiles again, singing and tickling her baby Jonathon, growing lovelier with every day’s passing, and I was fishing for kissing terms with Tessa Lloyd Parry.

  Eh, were I a poet I would write a song to Tessa up at Squire’s Reach, telling of the beauty of the daughters of the gentry. Seeing quite a bit of her lately, though I kept it secret, and sharp after Sunday dinners I would go through Waldo’s preserves to Squire’s Reach and a once-a-week loving. Held her hand Sunday before last. Kissing this week if I plucked up the courage.

  There is kissing and kissing, of course. You can have one for a penny from Sixpenny Jane, though I’d never tried it, and I could have had one a minute from Hettie Winetree, though Dilly Morgan was sharp with backhanders, her dad being strict. But the kissing of gentry is a very different thing, and practice is needed to get the thing perfect.

  Morfydd’s mirror. Into her bedroom for a good clean parting, polished up and pulled in, hair flat with water.

  “Tessa!”

  I would have given my soul to be gentry just then; cool, calm, sure of myself. And then I remembered a painting Mam had once, of a poor chap grovelling, all wigs and laces, beseeching a bone from a lady disdainful.

  “Tessa!”

  Try one knee, for both looks like begging, giving it to her with a voice like a tombstone, and Morfydd comes in. Took one look, the bitch, and sat down rocking. Just sat there holding her stays, beetroot in the face to burst blood vessels, making no sound.

  Up scalded me.

  “A damned sneak you are!” I shouted.

  “Aye? Then whose damned mirror, whose damned bedroom? Cross my palm with silver or it is going over the county,” and she reeled away to the bed and went flat on it, thumping.

  “What is the trouble, what is the commotion?” Mam now, feathers waving, just come from Chapel. “And bad language, too – I will not stand for it, Sunday at that!”

  But Morfydd just shrieked, thumping the pillow.

  Away, me. Downstairs like a bullet, skidded through the kitchen and out the back, upending Grandfer coming in for dinner.

  Sunday afternoon.

  Along the spring lanes, me; full of beef undercut and Mari’s plum pudding, for we were eating better these days; whistling to lose my front ones, hands in pockets, special combed and fluffed up like a hen coming broody. Quite determined, now. One day, I knew, I would marry Tessa Lloyd Parry and bring some gentry into the Mortymer blood and knock some of the pugilism out of it. One day from Tessa I would bring forth my kind, though just then I couldn’t imagine her bringing anything forth save a little silver slipper. Dainty, she was; Welsh dark, only up to my shoulder, but educated. Fifteen today, too, with Greek verses and Homers on her table at tea: raised in a hammock between two cherry trees, eating honeybread to pass the time while I was into oatmeal soup and crawling under the county. Queer old pair we made, come to think of it.

  Some nights, when we first came to Cae White, I would walk in the darkness of her home at Squire’s Reach and watch the comings and goings behind the lace-covered windows. There, dying for a peep at Tessa, I would see the gentry; the men, elegant in their frock coats bowing to carpets; slim men, tall, the pick of the English officers, some billeted there to put down Rebecca. And lovely were the women, with waists for dog-collars and their high-pushed breasts curved white under the chandeliers. Minuet now, the hand-drooping dances, with harpists brought in for the price of a dinner. I am partial to music myself, being Welsh; preferring a good solid choir with plenty of brass under it to a milky minuet. And colour and dignity I like, too, seeing them sometimes in a woman off to Chapel or the sight of a big man hewing in strength. But the bowing and scraping of lords and ladies I could never bear, especially in the men. For the fingers of Man were made for clenching and handclasp, not for waving lace, and I would rather stink of honest cow muck than despoil my manhood with perfume.

  Beautiful was Squire’s mansion up on the Reach, with the flowering clematis and creeper of centuries drooping in profusion over its entrance, while behind the marble columns all the pride and wealth of the county danced and curtseyed to the bowed good evenings. And sometimes, in the glitter of the room, I would see my Tessa staying up late for a special occasion, being delicate. In her high cane chair she would sit with the beaux of the county dancing her attention. About my own age, some of these, and I longed to get among them three at a time. Bitter, unequal, I would watch from the shadows of the drive, born the wrong side of the blanket, listening for the gardener and his get to hell out of it. But sustained within by the truth of it – that Tessa Lloyd Parry didn’t give a damn for the gentry sons while I was loose – me, Jethro Mortymer, torn coat and hobnails.

  We met first on Waldo Bailiff’s afternoon off. Up on the Reach I was, looking for suicide salmon, Mam being partial to it, though it damned near choked her with the speed she got it down. But a salmon has a right to die as anyone else, I reckon, being sick of the parasites and weary of the journeyings. So down on the bank you go, slip in a stick with a wire noose on the end. For hours you might lie till the poor creature comes, jaded, unhappy, seeking an end to it. In goes his head, pull the noose tight, out on the bank with him and a crack with a boulder, and you slip him back in the river to float past Cae White where Morfydd, by chance, happens to be waiting. Salmon, I think, are much like humans. Like Jess Williams, Grandfer’s neighbour about thirty years back – dying to meet his Maker, was Jess, and down he comes in his nightshirt, a rope in one hand, a bucket in the other, with Moc, his twin brother, waiting in their barn. Up on the bucket went Jess with the rope over a beam, and Moc kicked the bucket away at a given signal. Helpful, I call that; brotherly love. Murder they called it in Carmarthen, and they hanged Moc in public.

  “Die hard, Moc Williams,” called his mam from the crowd. “Die hard like our Jess,” and Moc did so, for he loved his mam.

  Wrong, this, for if a man is begging for St Peter he should be assisted.

  I helped my first salmon out of it soon after arriving. This summer I was waiting for my fifteenth; dozing on the banks of the Reach in the bee-loud silence, watching the waving of the water-lilies and the caress of bindweed where the quicksilver fins flashed bright in the depths. Ring-doves were shouting from the fringes of Cae White, rising as diamonds in the windless air. Sweating, I dozed, but a splash brought me upright. More fishermen – splashing along in a welter of foam, mam leading, dad following and three babies af
ter him swimming demented. Whiskered noses swept the river, black eyes gleamed in sunlight – throwing a live trout from snout to snout, an arc of silver, wriggling, diving. Whistling, plunging, the otters played, and I never heard a footstep.

  “Good afternoon,” said Tessa.

  Up like lightning, fists clenched, looking for a bailiff’s chin, and the stick and noose slipped into the river and drifted down to Cae White. Through a pattern of branches Tessa made shape.

  Am I supposed to tell of her with only words to use?

  Pale was her face, lips stained red; thin and dark, a hand would have snappedher. Her long, summer dress was white and dainty with lace, her long hair black against it. And she held aside her pink parasol and smiled, her eyes coming alive in her face. Always known her behind glass before, never met officially.

  “How are you?” I said. Just sat, awaiting sentence. Caught poaching on her dada’s river, and in daylight. And how the hell she got there was anyone’s guess just then.

  “Jethro Mortymer, is it?”

  Amazing what gentry know. Hooking at my collar, me.

  “How is your mother, Jethro Mortymer?”

  “Very pleasant.”

  “Did you see the otters?”

  “O, aye.”

  “Beggars for the poaching, though. Listen to that, now,” said she, for the belly-flops of a salmon pursued came up the river and the otters were whistling and plunging as madmen. “O, that sound drives Waldo Bailiff demented. Do you come here often?”

  “First time.”

  “To poach salmon?”

  “Upon my soul!” I said, shocked.

  She laughed then, face turned up.

  “There’s a pity, for one salmon more or less don’t make much difference,” which is not the way she said it but the only way I can tell it. “Especially when the otters kill for sport. You heard them at night?”

  Nearer she leaned, her voice coming secret. “O, there is a wildness and freedom about otters, I do think, and a good full moon will always start them capering. Some nights, when the vapours are billowing, I pull back the curtains and listen till dawn. And old Grandfer Badger down in Bully Hole Bottom grunting and singing at the moon. Killed four fox hounds last fall – you seen him?”

  “Never,” I answered, for he had his hole in Waldo’s preserves and I had sprung four gins to save him last spring. “Never seen a badger in my life.”

  “You seen herons down on the estuary?”

  “No,” I said, for the estuary was near the rabbit warren.

  “Old Bill Stork on the mere?”

  I knew him like a brother; shook my head.

  “Backward, you, for a farming boy,” said she, peeved. “Hen coots you know of, I expect?”

  “O, aye, seen tons of coots.”

  “And heard the Reach curlews calling at dawn?”

  “Then I be sleeping.”

  “Good grief,” said she, and straightened herself tidy. “Reckon if Grandfer Zephaniah wants Cae White ploughing this year he must do it himself again.”

  “Ploughed,” I said.

  “But not by you, I vow.”

  “Indeed?” I said, cool.

  “Indeed,” said she, cooler, and we sat there just looking, knives chiefly.

  I glanced at the sky for the sun had pulled up his trews again and the air of the river blew sudden cold, though a mite warmer than Tessa who had one shoulder turned.

  “How old are you, Jethro Mortymer?” Duchess now.

  “Hitting it up for fourteen.”

  She eyed me sideways. “Is it true you’ve got a brother?”

  I nodded, coming warmer, for this was Iestyn my god.

  “In transportation, isn’t he?”

  “Seven years he got at Monmouth,” I replied.

  Her chin an inch higher now, untouchable.

  “A criminal he is, says Waldo Bailiff. That true?”

  “Seven years,” I said, hot. “For fighting against gentry like you and scum like Waldo Bailiff, to make things decent for people starving. And we are waiting for him, me and the family, keeping Cae White until he comes back.”

  Eyes like saucers now with me standing over her.

  “And when he comes back he will build the place up,” I said, hotter. “He’ll build Cae White as big as Squire’s Reach, and we will buy up the river and fish our own salmon, for he’d dust any ten round here with Waldo Bailiff to fill in time, so tell him watch out.”

  Pretty worked up. Always the same when I spoke of Iestyn. She was staring at me, her eyes ringed with their sleepless nights of shadow, and as we were looking it rained.

  No warning, just pelted; hitting the river into life in a sudden sweep of the wind.

  “O, dear!” said Tessa, and up with her parasol. “Ben, Ben!”

  “Who’s Ben?” I asked, standing over her with the flaps of my coat trying to keep her dry.

  “My servant. Ben!”

  Squinted through the trees, but no sign of him.

  “O, my dress – just look at my dress!” She turned her face to mine, rain-splashed, appealing, and I thought she would cry.

  “Up a dando,” I said, and knelt, lifting her, running like a demon to the veranda of the big house. There I set her in a cane chair, and turned, skidding down the steps from the holy portals of Squire to the teeming white of the river. Awkward questions to be answered if I hung round there. Away then, back to Cae White, reaching home just as Morfydd was fishing the stick and noose from the river and yelling to Mam that Jethro was drowned.

  Damned near it.

  I leaned against the shed at the back and looked up the Reach, thinking of Tessa. Wet was my face, and not all the wetness rain. For the cripples of Carmarthen city are as Tessa Lloyd Parry, I thought; knobbled knees on their winter pavements, the drumstick wavings of their starving children, the ragged droop of their twisted crones.

  From a lopsided womb had come Tessa, spewed, not delivered, and she had not walked since birth. Strange you can pass the cripples of the poor without a second look while the sight of crippled gentry brings you to tears. Strange is Man’s pity. The cripple in rags is revolting but pity is flung at the cripple in silk.

  Cutting hearts in oak trees now, entwined, pierced, dripping with blood.

  We met in secret, of course, with a tongue-pie for Tessa and a belting for me if her dad, the Squire, got hold of it, and if old Ben, the servant, knew of our meetings he kept it pretty well buttoned. Special, this Sunday – Tessa’s birthday, being June, and a cameo brooch for presentation from me – thieved by moonlight from Morfydd’s room. Death by fire for the thief if she found him.

  O, that Sunday!

  Larks were singing in the unbroken blue and just enough heat in the air to evaporate Waldo’s dewdrop. White-sailed schooners ploughed the estuary and the mountains were fleeced with the splashing brooks as the bath plug came out of spring. Bedsheet clouds were billowing round Gabriel who was sorting them out for weddings and shrouds, and the old sun, catching alight to the flame of summer, flung golden swords over the bright green country. O, wonderful is summer! Crescent wing on bubbling air, the eaves-chattering sparrows, with a million hearts leaping to the wooing every square mile, including me. Singing, face turned up to the sun, my heart was pounding with every step nearer to Tessa. Down from Cae White to the woods of the Reach, leaping the gates, diving over the hedges to Tessa’s red lips and a once-a-week loving – through Waldo’s game preserves now, into Squire’s field where his rams were grazing. Clovenhooved swines, these, with the faces of Satan and enough lust in their matings to satisfy Nick himself. Never took to rams much, preferring their wives and their children with their thumb-sucking daintiness. So over the gate with me and I landed on one’s back, gripping his horns, heeling his sides, and away across the field we went as things insane with the other ram following and baa-ing blue murder. Nothing like a ride on a ram, says Joey; an art in itself, says he, for if you can stay on a ram in June you’ll ride most things. Through the lambs
we went and over his backside went me, with his mate catching me square as I presented the target, the devil, bowling me somersaults. I fled with rams after me and belly-dived the fence into Bully Hole Bottom. Duck Waldo’s fence again and the mantrap faces you; try it with your toe for the fun of it, risking your foot for the joy of it, and the game birds rise to the shattering crash. Wait, steady. Stand stock still, for the woods have eyes, one pair especially. Over by there, a bit to the left. Motionless he stands, old Grandfer Badger, carved in stone, every nerve trembling, for he knows what is coming if I get within reach of him. Nose down to leaves he stands, hoping to be missed in the forest stillness of branch and leaf. Hands in pockets, I started whistling, wandering towards him, kicking at stones, not the least bit interested in badgers. Then leap the last yards. Shoulders screwing he dives for his earth, frantic, for the earth is a fox hole and not designed for badgers. In! Kneeling, I stared into darkness, then cursed his soul, for he kicked with his hind feet and shot out pebbles to blind me. Down flat for revenge then, one arm down the hole. Legs waving, I reached for him, fingers prodding till I touched his backside, then walked my fingers to the stump of his tail, gripped it and heaved; and the earth is rumbling to the thunder of his indignity. Red in the face, he is, bracing his forelegs, scraping his hindlegs, for that swine Jethro Mortymer’s got hold of my tail. Heave. Grandfer heaves back. Seen and unseen we grunt and strain, but he is a grandfer and I am younger, and out he comes bellowing. Roaring, he comes, stumps of teeth bared, wheeling for the conflict, snapping, snarling. Away, me, followed by Grandfer, leaping the boulders, putting up pheasants. But wait!

  Little Mam Pheasant is lying in leaves, and her beak is red and her chest is heaving, for Waldo and his gun have passed her in flight, and she turns up her head to the tickle of my finger. Dad Pheasant now, head on one side, inquiring; cannot make out why she’s broody in June. Soft was her neck in the twist of my fingers and the wind did a sigh as her little soul flew upward. Up in a branch with her, for Mam has a fancy for pheasants; up beyond the reach of thieving badgers, and on to the river. Running now, hobnails thumping for the last quarter mile. Breasting a rise I raced down the hollow and along the bank where Tessa sits waiting.