Hosts of Rebecca

by Alexander Cordell

  “Tessa!”

  Sitting as I left her last Sunday. But different this time, sweetened by the year of our parting. Breathless, I reached her, and knelt.

  “Tessa,” I said, gasping.

  The way she looked, perhaps, the narrowing of eyes. No need for mirrors. I kissed her. And I heard the quick inrush of her breath as I put my arms about her and kissed her again and her yellow straw hat fell off to her shoulders and her hair tumbled down to the force and fire. Great was the strength in me, sudden, unpitying, and she turned away her face and twisted in my arms, and there was a trembling within her that leaped to my fingers. Soft was her breast. …

  “Jethro!” she said, sharp. “Jethro!”

  Didn’t mean to do it, sorry now; but I’d do it again if she so much as looked. Sat back then and watched her in profile, seeing the flash of the river behind her, and her eyes were all mystery and brightness. Gave me a glance then, the glance of a woman, and I reckoned she knew what I had in mind, for she put on her straw hat and set it tidy, very prim, tying the bows again, looking away.

  “If you don’t mind,” she said.

  “Many happy returns,” I said.

  “Thank you,” said she. “But my birthday. Not yours, remember.”

  O, beautiful, she looked just then.

  “I am sorry,” I said.

  Silence, save for the wind and the splash-plops of the river, and gurgling.

  “But a child you are, Jethro,” she said then. “Do not make it hard.”

  Poor Tessa. Just wanted to hold her then and soothe and kiss her, but I did not dare. Had to say something.

  “Look,” I said. “Old Grandfer Badger is down in Bully Hole Bottom, girl. Roaring and raging, he is, for I’ve just had him out by the tail. You ever seen Grandfer?”

  “No,” she said. Eyes low now, threatening tears, fingers ripping at her little lace handkerchief.

  “Not interested?”

  She shook her head, lips trembling.

  “O, Jethro,” she whispered, and wept.

  I held her. All the heat gone, I held her, and her old hat fell off again and her hair went down again. Just the two of us in the world then.

  “Thought I’d forgotten?” I asked, holding her away. “See now, here is a valuable. Your birthday, and I’ve been saving up for months. Tessa, don’t cry. Look, look!” and I fished out the brooch. Wonderful was her face as she blinked away tears and her eyes opened wide at the sight of it. God knows what would happen if Morfydd saw it on her.

  “Jethro, you shouldn’t have done it!”

  “Cost a small fortune,” I said, but I know it cost twopence for I watched Morfydd buy it from the tinker. “Got it down in Whitland,” I said. “Fair day.”

  “O, it is lovely!”

  “Shall I pin it on, girl?”

  Eyes up at this. “I can manage myself, thank you.”

  “Tessa!”

  “Eh?”

  “Will you be my girl now and stick to me, is it?”

  “Not much chance of me running,” she answered. “Look, boy – is it tidy?”

  “There’s an old wacko you are,” I said. “Pretty it do look on you,” and I leaned forward as she reached for my lips.

  “Pretty for you,” she said.

  “Till death do us part and down in wooden suits,” I said. “You are my girl now, you promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dry up, then,” I said. “Do not look so mournful. Down to Bully Hole Bottom with us, is it?”

  “How can I walk to Bully Hole Bottom? Jethro, have sense!”

  “On my back,” I cried. “I could carry an elephant. Look, if we hurry grandfer will still be there and I will fetch him out again for you. Come on!”

  “O, stay!” she replied, and just looked. And the way she looked.

  “To the devil with badgers,” she said. “Jethro!”

  The lips so curved are dying for kisses, and her eyes closed to the sun as I drew her against me, and saw, in a rift of her hair the distant roof of the mansion and the poplars of the Big Field misted in sunlight and the silver ribbon river winding to the hills.

  Cool is the kiss at the beginning, then growing to warmth as the kiss is longer, steaming dry to fire as the breaths come quicker, till the kissed is a quarry that seeks escape from the circling iron of the capturing arm and she sighs and faints in the greater strength. O, mad is that strength!

  “Jethro!”

  I did not answer and she clung to me, and I saw the faint white scratches of my chin on her face, that would later turn red.

  “Jethro, do not touch me, not again!”

  “Tessa,” I said, and was ashamed.

  “Just … kiss me. So I can remember?”

  CHAPTER 9

  NOW I STOOD in a universe of nights and days boiling in the inch between boyhood and manhood, and listened to the call of the scythe. The wind sighed through the grasses and the corn of Grandfer’s acres were as gold. Coo-doves called from the woods, herons from the Tywi where the salmon swirled up for their act of creation and Tessa’s otters barked in moonlight.

  Waking early that morning I pulled on my boots and went down to the kitchen to the back, listening to the tinkling splashes from the mere as the hencoots got busy among beaks where the bulrushes stood in shimmering silence. There came to me a song then, not the song of Ponty, sweating and grimed, but the windy sighing of corn falling obliquely to the scythe, its razor edge flashing and stained with clover flowers that clung to the wetted shine of boots. I saw, in my sleep-gummed eyes, the line of the reapers, waist-deep in the corn, their naked backs sweating in midday heat, and the swing of their blades made sunfire in the gold. Earth smells came; the scent of burned pine; sour stinks from the rotted dumps of kale, the perfumed wind of overflowing barns. Great was Cae White then, as a ship at sea with billowing mists sailing in her turrets.

  The women were stirring in the bedrooms now, curtains swishing to let in sunlight; pot-clanking, bed-squeaks as Morfydd got out and her son’s thin protest at the sudden bedlam. She awoke like a man, this one, with all the palaver of a man, and what damned time do you call this and get to hell out of it. She washed as a man, too, stripped to the waist in frost.

  “Diawl!” she said at the door now. “Somebody’s got a conscience. Have you put her in trouble?”

  Venus, complete with arms, towel dangling, hair on her shoulders.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said. “Just come naked.”

  She smiled at this and came to the water butt beside me and flung back her hair and tied it with red ribbon, and I turned away as she hit the tub with all the corkings and bubblings of a man from shift.

  “Well, now,” said she, rubbing for a glow. “And what is it thinking?”

  “My business.”

  “O, aye? Then it do happen to be mine also. D’you know what time Grandfer got in last night?”

  “I go to bed to sleep,” I said.

  “Not much option round these parts, mind,” and she winked and held the towel against her. “Coo-dove time, an hour or so back. Belted with quarts, he was, climbing up one stair and belly-sliding ten – making enough commotion to raise the damned rent. Reckon you must die if you didn’t hear Grandfer. Drunk? Three nights running now.” She jerked her head at the standing corn. “The place won’t get a shave this side of Christmas the way he’s going. Time those fields was down.”

  “Where he gets the money from puzzles me,” I said.

  “Grandfer’s business – not yours, or mine. Neither is scything my business. What I know about farming can be written on a toenail, but I reckon to eat next winter.”

  “And I know less than you,” I said.

  “Time somebody learned, then, time somebody moved. I’m a different shape in the chest to you but I’d have a try if there wasn’t a man around.”

  “What about Ponty? Do I hew with Muldooney and farm, too?”

  “I’ll handle Ponty.”

  “Twenty acres of corn,”
I said. “Abel Flannigan might help.”

  She was tapping her foot now, eyes narrowed.

  “Or Osian Hughes,” I said.

  I had made a note of Osian. With Morfydd’s suitors tiptoeing around Cae White thicker than fleas in workhouse bedding, Osian was the handiest. She had only to wink her eye and he’d have lowered our corn in fifteen minutes.

  “Listen, you,” said she. “If we take scissors to these fields we will cut them alone, for our men have never gone crying yet. Grandfer’s finished, understood? Give him six months and he’ll be boxed in cedar and brass handles. When a man slips on quarts he slides to the devil. Do you want your Squire Parry to take the place over? For he’ll damned soon do it if the corn isn’t lowered.”

  “He will not do that,” I said.

  “Gratifying. Influence, is it? You’ll get some influence if he catches you with Tessa.” She turned to the door. “You heard what happened at the Reach last night?”

  I nodded.

  “And how your Parry is roaring and threatening to put out his tenants?”

  With good reason, I thought.

  For his river had been emptied between Tarn and the Reach; near four hundred salmon littering the banks, brought out by the poachers and left to rot. This was Rebecca again, dishing out punishment because Squire had lent money to a turnpike trust. By night she visited the Tywi with flares and cudgels and the fish were harpooned and dragged out to die; scores being spitted on the railings of the mansion, flung over his steps and lawns, thrown through his windows, tied to his knockers. There is no law to say that Squire is sole owner, of roads or salmon, said Rebecca in her note. With hungry men in gaol for poaching the temptation must be removed, said Rebecca, and Squire Lloyd Parry must have the lot. As his gates will be burned when he puts them up.

  “And tonight we are eating like fighting cocks,” said Morfydd, “for I fetched in a fresh one at midnight.”

  “That is asking for trouble,” I replied sharp. “Waldo Bailiff has a nose for boiling salmon.”

  “Boiled,” said she. “And if he shows his dewdrop in here he will breathe his last. I will handle Waldo – you handle that corn. I am going alone to Ponty.”

  Cups and saucers were tinkling from the kitchen as I came in from the tub. Smoke curled from the twisted chimney, chairs scraped on flagstones, and I thought of the days when we first came to Cac White. Grandfer was in charge then. Seven of us down to supper at night and not a whisper while we fed; just belches and pardons from Grandfer at the top and wallowings from Richard and Jonathon, while the big black clock on the mantel ticked time to the pork crackling, with hands reaching for bread or grasping pewter for cider gulps. Money in plenty those days, too, and Grandfer was a giant of a man for five feet odd, very much in charge; beating his breast with one little hand, thumbing up the Testaments with the other, and every Grace was the same – a whine about some poor soul at a feast who was told to get shifting and who up and said that even curs were due for crumbs, Amen, and slap went the Book and into things went Grandfer, for the head of the house had to be fed with a regiment of in-laws to keep. Different now. Grandfer was finished with Cae White. So with my first harvest waiting I went into the kitchen, and the table, I saw, was laid for one. Husbandman first, said Mari, smiling. Farming stock for generations and proud of it.

  I sat down, watching her as she sweated over the hob.

  “Men first, Jethro, women later,” she said, smiling wider, and I knew then that the women had been planning, with Morfydd having the first go at me and Mam coming after. Fat bacon was sizzling in the pan, God knows where they got it; the kettle singing his lovesong to the pot; buttermilk, bread whiter than usual, and the cloth was as snow. Most important now, Jethro Mortymer, with the head man gone lazy and pickled in hops.

  “Sit you down, bach,” said Mari, smoothing and patting, and I looked at her.

  Expectation was in her, evident in her trembling hands, and I saw the ring of gold that bound her to my brother, and smelled the lavender sweetness that was Mari’s from the day Iestyn brought her home to Blaenafon. Bright were her eyes, meeting mine but once, flicking away with the colour reddening her cheeks. Jonathon, Mari’s baby, was two years old now, but she still had him on the breast. We saved the easy work for her for she was still making up for her breech-birth labour; couldn’t pull round on oatmeal soup, said Mam. But satisfying Jonathon was harder than kitchen work with his cooings and bubblings and reaching for her breast. Strange that I was jealous of Jonathon. His whimpering offended me because she was slave to him, leaping to serve his first strangled cry. His pear-shaped bottom was vulgarity to me – something that was smoothed with oils in public, reflected in mirrors, even kissed. The body of a girl child to me is a thing of beauty, and the body of a baby boy atrocious. For one paints its picture of the fountain of life, and is fruitful. But the body of a boy is all cherubs and cupids, the lie to manhood with its belly-rolls and wrist bangles.

  Sometimes, from my chair in the corner, I would watch Mari with Jonathon; one eye on the Cambrian, the other on his suspended animation, frenzied in his fight for freedom while she gripped his fat ankles between fingers and thumb. Head dangling, upside down, he would catch my eye and bubble his smiles, exposing his nakedness without a blush and his shocking maleness with pride. And Mari, pins in mouth, would be ardent to do best by him in sweating concentration; wiping stray hairs from her eyes, forearm on his chest, tiptoeing her knees up in case he rolled off. And fighting to get the rag round him he streams his indecency down to her ankles.

  “O, Duw! O, there’s a horrid boy, Jonathon. O, Jethro, look now, drenched, I am drenched!”

  Up with the newspaper, pretend not to look, and he crows his delight in shouts and gurgles. Hand up, she threatens, but never brings it down.

  “I will smack you next time, mind, or call Uncle Jethro, for he is handy with smackings. Dirty old boy!”

  “Taking after his uncle, though,” says Morfydd, sewing, needle held up to the light. “Remember, Mam – a soaking baby if ever there was one, that Jethro.”

  “Whoever was nearest, girl. You, me or the Bishop of Bangor.”

  Up with the Cambrian.

  “And the time he drowned old Tomos back home, remember?” Morfydd again. In her element, the bitch. “And Tomos dressed for speechifying. Aye, aye, and the Sunday trews his speciality, too.” She winks at Mari. “But take a tip, girl – contented was Jethro. Two and a half and still on the breast – never got a fork into solids till he was nigh on three, and what we lost in the soakings we saved on the stomach gripe, eh, Mam?”

  “And the belly band – remember the belly band.” Mam now, treadling away.

  “O, aye, girl. Never without it. It do cut the wind for certain do the belly band.”

  And there was Mari’s eyes sober serious, meeting mine over the top of the Cambrian with her sweet, sad smile; not knowing of the torment, pure in heart.

  Too pure in heart to realize that the inch of her breast was curvcd in whiteness, switching my eyes.

  Eh, this business of growing to manhood.

  Now she stood beside me to serve my plate in the kitchen, with something of love in her face.

  “Jethro,” she said.

  “Aye?” I turned away, breaking bread.

  “Jethro, you will reap the corn for me? Never mind the old coaling down in Ponty – it can wait, and with Morfydd labouring it is enough for a family. Ashamed, I am, with Grandfer sleeping drunk, but already the fields are turning. For a field of blackened corn is as sad as a funeral cloth, and everyone has their barns stacked save us.” Back at the hob now, she turned. “I will cook and mend for you, as I did for my Iestyn. O, but a boy you are, but there is life in Cae White and you must not let it die.”

  “I am a furnace man and collier,” I said. “I know nothing of farming.”

  “But you will try?”

  Just went on chewing, wanting to hear her voice.

  “Mam and me will work, too, and Richard will come
for the gleanings. To build Cae White for Iestyn, Jethro – for when he comes back.”

  “Long years yet, Mari.”

  “But they will pass. O, I have been waiting, waiting, and you have made no move.”

  “All right, all right,” I said.

  Her face was radiant. “Today?”

  Strange the glory in seeing her pleading.

  “Yes,” I said. “Now send Mam in, it is her turn now.”

  “I am here,” said Mam. “Do not worry.”

  “Jethro,” said Morfydd from behind her. “Mam do want to speak to you, official.”

  “Away the lot of you,” I answered. “I am entitled to breakfast.”

  “He is reaping, he is reaping!” cried Mari, dancing.

  “Should be worth seeing,” said Morfydd, in now. “Two feet shorter by the time he comes in tonight. And the point of a scythe can get into funny old places, so mind.”

  I just ignored it, feeling superior. Never before was I so wanted; walked out and left them, in search of the scythe.

  I have seen white beards waving over the snathes of sythes, and arms no thicker than my wrist that have swung from dawn to dusk; the sinewy bodies of grandfathers too old to die, the pendulum bellies of drunkards that have swayed to the sigh of the whetted ground. Spitting on my hands I gripped the splits, and swung, and sunfire flashed on the edge of the blade as it hissed for my ankles. Leaping high, I fell, with the thing pitch-forking as something alive.

  Gently, this time, the point held low, I cut a few stalks at a time, feeling for the balance, for the touch of a gorse-fly’s wing is enough to send the point diving. An hour of practice and I was revelling in the singing cut of the steel, though I knew it would take a lifetime of learning; left foot forward swing, and the corn lies down; the backward swing, then forward in the rhythm of Nature. The sun, flushing after his heavy meal of summer, was strickening in brilliance. Left foot forward, swing and back. I smelled the mowing smells of bruised corn, a dryness crept to my throat, but the song of the scythe was an exultation within me, and I disdained the pain of my already blistered hands. On, on, the blade flatter now, a bow of steel encircling my legs. The ache of my loins crept to my back, spreading fingers of fire to my shoulders, but still I worked on. Sweat ran in streams over my face. On, on, left foot forward, swing, and back. Sickening now, but I was still at it strongly, scything in a fashion, getting the damned stuff down. Great I felt then, tied at the knees and belted. Above me in the incinerating blue a lark nicked and dived, his body a diamond of light, and his joy drove me on, eyes narrowed to midday glare now, teeth gritted to the cramping agony in a world of gold that shimmered and swayed. An hour later the sun was hottest, the poplars of Cae White alight and glittering. Heat reflected on my naked shoulders, but I plunged on blindly. Gasping now, longing for the cold draughts of the colliery shafts, the pain was a ring of steel about me, and the last swing came with an indrawn breath. The point hit a stone. The sky somersaulted as the scythe heeled again. I fell, seeking oblivion in the earth and the waving ears above me. Panting, I opened my hands. Claws for fingers, cramped and red, and the sudden gush of tears splashed and stung them, running in salt veins, mingling with blood. Knew I was beaten. Shutting my eyes to the sunglare I let the fire and sweat run over me.