She should have been in the Navy with her mainmast floggings.
CHAPTER 12
TROUBLE WAS coming.
The wooden horse was stalking the Carmarthenshire hills most nights now, catching the spots from Pembrokeshire. In every town Rebecca was springing up, and this, a movement that began with the small farmers, was now bringing in farm labourers and even quite rich farmers – both ends of the social scale. No gates were burned since Efail-wen, but hayricks were going up nightly, fewer threatening letters sent to the magistrates, more action instead. Floggings were frequent for those who dished out floggings, but Rebecca was best with the moral wrongs. Chiefly a Nonconformist movement, the laws of God were invoked as reason for the punishments. A man could not even beat his wife without a warning or worse; flog a child and be flogged; bastard babies were delivered at night to callous fathers who had cast off their mothers. A guardian of public morals was Rebecca, thank God, said Morfydd, who was a fine one to talk, said Mam, the way she had carried on in Monmouthshire and now trying the same antics here.
September died into the mists of late autumn. Prices were going up, the cost of living leaping weekly, but the price of corn was coming down – blame the damned speculators, said Flannigan, though he couldn’t spell the name – blame the rapacious men of industry who were discharging labour in order to keep their bulbous profits. Blame the swindlers who were jacking up food prices without official control at a time when people were starving and prepared to work for a loaf. One thing to grow your corn these days, quite another thing to sell it, and what slender profit you managed to get was swallowed by the iniquitous road tolls. So I threshed our corn that year, paid in kind to the miller for its grinding, and used the flour for our bread – living off the land in every sense, but I knew this would not last for long. I was paying the pound a week rent now, not Grandfer, and our savings were again nearly gone; Morfydd alone kept us from the workhouse, and I knew I would have to join her at Ponty soon again, although I had grown to love farming.
“Potatoes, potatoes,” said Morfydd, “that is the county’s trouble.
“The county would starve without them, though,” said Mam.
“Work it out,” replied Morfydd, hot as usual. “Potatoes and biddings are the root of starvation, and this is how it works. A couple in love want to marry, and can’t – they can’t because they haven’t twopence to bless themselves with. So they have a bidding and their friends subscribe, and they rake up a few pounds to start a home. Then come the kids, one every year, with the couple forking out their shilling a week for their friends who want to marry – returning the bidding money. This brings them low, so they drop to potatoes – once a day for a start – three times a day later, and that is starvation.”
“Nothing wrong with a mess of potatoes, though,” said Mam. “God knows what we’d do without the old spud.”
“God knows,” I said, “until you eat them every meal.”
“And if the crop fails, you starve,” said Morfydd, “like Ireland. Potatoes, undernourishment; more potatoes, illness; no potatoes, death. And if you doubt me ask them in Dublin. Same with this country. A north country farm labourer is cheaper to employ at fifteen shillings a week than a Welsh labourer on half the money, for the Welshman has been reared on your precious spuds and his output is a third of the man from the north. If you flog him to work, he dies – worked out at thirty – open your church registers.”
“Happy little soul, you are,” said Mam. “Talking about death. Do you think we could talk about living for a change.”
“Give me something to live for and I’ll try,” replied Morfydd.
I chanced a look at her. Still beautiful, still vital, I could see her changing with every month at Ponty. For a tram-tower she was living on borrowed time; should have passed on years back.
“Something will have to be done,” continued Morfydd. “Wherever you look the coffins are out and doing, but few bishops die, except from overeating, arriving at the throne room with a chicken leg in each hand, side by side with the workhouse poor. One consolation, questions will be asked. The gentry the same – go to Carmarthen for the gilded carriages with their damned postillions whipping for a path. Eh, God alive! Banquets and feasts on the smallest excuse while we get by on oatmeal broth. Few gentry die, except from port.”
“How is Tessa these days?” asked Mari.
This as always, the discreet, the gentle; changing the subject, blunting the edge of Morfydd’s knife; God, I loved her, and flung my thoughts back to Tessa.
“I have not heard,” I said.
“Do you think it would be too much trouble to find out?” asked Morfydd.
“I have been to the Reach waiting every Sunday for months.”
“If I loved a man who was dying I would not knock at the door. I would be in there quick, and hook him out. You could have called, Jethro.” She looked at me.
“Leave it,” said Mam, frowning.
“Seconds back you were shouting about gentry,” I said, bitter.
Morfydd glanced up. “Gentry living and gentry dying are two different things. Poor little soul.”
“You cannot expect him to knock at the door,” said Mari. “Morfydd, they would only throw him out.”
“He is a Mortymer,” said Morfydd. “He does the throwing.”
“Better go up, boy,” said Mam. “For once Morfydd is right.”
Morfydd rose and went to the fire, hands spread to the peat blaze. “You don’t have to worry, they are sending for you tonight.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Squire. Don’t ask me more, I don’t know any more – heard it in the village. Tessa is nearing the end. …”
“God,” I said, and got up, wandering, gripping things.
“And Squire is sending down for Jethro?” whispered Mari.
There was a meeting that night up on the mountain, but I could not go now. Rising, I went out the back and looked at the sky. I was watching for rain about then, having in mind an early ploughing. Leaned against the back, dreaming. The fields were coming ghostly under the moon and he was as big as a cheese with him and rolling over the mountains. A nip of frost was in the air and a scent of peat fires, and I saw for the first time quite clearly the mud and wattle houses squatting on the foothills as little bullfrogs, their blind windows glinting for eyes. Went back into the house, cold away from the fire. And Mari was reading from the Book.
“‘By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways. I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but found him not. The watchmen that go about the city found me; to whom I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth …?’”
Sitting down, I watched Mari’s face. No grief there, save for the brightness of her eyes, which could have been because of the beauty, then I looked at my mother. Stitching away like mad, she was, too busy for innocence, and Morfydd nodded at them a queer old look and a sigh. I knew what she was thinking.
“Can’t you find something happier, Mari?” I asked, sitting down.
“It is what Mam wants,” said Mari.
“Great is the Lord and with humour,” said Morfydd. “Heaven knows why we clad Him in sackcloth and misery, as if He never smiled.”
“My Reading,” said Mam. “There are other rooms in the house. Go on, Mari.”
And Mari read:
“‘It was but a little while that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth; I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother’s house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me …’”
My mother was weeping softly, stitching away.
“Mam, for God’s sake,” I said, and she raised her eyes at me, lowering them with a gesture of helplessness.
“No good hunting for tears, Mam,” said Morfydd. “There is enough to go round for the lot of us.”
Something was into me that night. I said,
“A damned grave this is, not a house. Is it right to bleed yourself about Dada one minute and sing the glories of meeting in Heaven the next?”
“Jethro,” Mam whispered, helpless.
“You mind, now!” said Morfydd in panic.
“Weepings and Readings will not bring him back!” I said. “God, if he could see you sometimes. Ghosts walk this house, not people – Richard; my father, and Iestyn – even Grandfer has his own pet ghost. Is it courage, is it living?”
“One day you will lose somebody, Jethro,” said Mari.
“I am losing somebody now. And when once she is gone nothing will be gained by weeping and moaning.”
It is bitter to see someone you care for making no fight of it. My mother had courage once, when she fought Nanty; when she scraped night and day to keep her family alive. Arrogant was her grief when she lost Edwina, as if she had made a fist of sorrow and brandished it in faces. No patience in me for this milksop weeping, singing the Song of Solomon, twisting herself to tears.
“You finished?” asked Morfydd, cold.
I turned away.
“Good,” said she, “now let me have a say. It do so happen that I have lost a man, too, and though I may not show it his loss turns like a knife, and we do not need the likes of you to tell us how to bear it lest you tell us with your fist in the fire till the sinews stretch and snap. Women have tears and men mind their business. Damned cruel, you are, to our little mam.”
“I am going,” I said, and got up.
“And damned good riddance, forgive me, Mam.”
“Wait,” said Mari. “Somebody is coming.”
“Hearing things,” I said.
I was not heartless, just bitter that my mother should torture herself, and I knew why. The visions of my father returned with greater power, she had said, since Morfydd had started coaling in Ponty; as if the grime of the washing-sink had restained her; the galleries of Nantyglo making echo in the dust of Morfydd’s hair and her coal-rimmed eyes. Bitter. I could have taken the name of my father just then and hurled it over towns, over the smoke-grimed roofs of Nanty where he died, battered it on the walls of mansions. Bitter, bitter, and I spit at grief. I got up, swinging on my coat, knowing a morgue better than this one, Black Boar tavern.
“I said somebody was coming,” said Mari. “Listen,” and a footstep scraped on the flags outside and a fist came on the door. I opened it.
Ben, Tessa’s servant, come down from the Reach.
“You Jethro Mortymer?”
“Know damned well I am.”
“Squire wants you up there, it’s important,” and he wept.
I closed my eyes and turned, looking into the room, and there came to me a song that was mine, the song of Tessa.
Left them alone with their Song of Solomon.
Queer is life and its sweet, sad music.
Never been up to the mansion before save for kisses and poaching, strange going up as a guest. And I went in the front way to Lloyd Parry’s credit, old Ben standing aside. Parry was awaiting me in the hall, the hall I had seen so often through windows. Narrow waisted, six feet odd, handsome in his black frock coat and cravat, he was waiting.
“Tessa is calling for you, Mortymer,” he said, and gripped my shoulder.
This was the ogre of the Trusts, a man broken, grey with grief. This was the one they had over every night in the taverns now, roasting him alive, drawing his name in ale. A fine as soon as he looks at you, they said, six months gaol for the leg of a rabbit. If his mantraps don’t get you Squire Parry will. Land in prison for sure if you stand before his bench; enter his Reach and you don’t come out alive.
“O, Jethro,” he said, and gripped me, sobbing against me. Just two men now. I held him, giving the nod to Ben over his shoulder.
“All I’ve got,” he said.
Just held him, nothing more I could do. Then he straightened, bracing himself and his head went up, bringing out the breeding.
“Tessa is dying,” he said.
Words come like fists swung in anger and you cannot ride or duck them, but stand square to the smack, as rooted.
He ran his fingers through his hair, lost, and I pitied him.
“For some time she has been asking, it seems, but we could not make it out till old Ben listened.”
“Yes,” I said.
“You will see her?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You will be good to her.”
I nodded, screwing at my hat.
“Come,” he said, “I will take you up,” and turned to the great white staircase and its thick, crimson carpet. I followed him up the stairs to the landing where peak-faced servants rustled to a great white door as the gateway of Heaven. Silently, he opened it.
“I will leave you alone with her,” he whispered.
The room was musty, every window shut tight against the chance of draught, with a smell of burned tallow. A great log fire burned in the hearth, leaping, spluttering. An ocean of a bed with a silk panelled head and blue counterpane, and the ship of its sea was Tessa’s face; stark white that face, her black hair flung over the pillows. Tiptoed in and stood beside her, looking down. Beautiful. Her skin was transparent in the light of the bedside candles; one hand on the silk, as wax; and the long, slim fingers were moving, seeking. Kneeling, I pressed them.
“Tessa,” I said, but she made no sign.
Just knelt there beside her, watching, remembering summer, and I bowed my head. When I looked again her eyes were open and she smiled, but not with her lips.
“Tessa.” I bent nearer. “Jethro, it is. You asking, girl?”
An otter barked down on the Reach and its mate replied with a whistle and I saw her eyes move to the window.
“You hear the otters, Tess?”
She nodded. No sound then but the sparking of the candles and her gusty breathing. The barking came again and she moved her eyes, listening. I leaned closer.
“You hear them?” I whispered. “Them old poachers still at it – going like demons for the salmon near the steps. God, there is big ones this year, coming up for spawning. Thirty pounds or more, I reckon, you should see them leaping!”
It breathed new life into her and she gripped my hand.
“And Bill Stork is still on one leg, down on the estuary – old Grandfer Badger’s rooting round Bully Hole Bottom – remember Grandfer? Had him out by the tail again last Sunday when I come up. And the curlews are crying from here to Kidwelly – you heard them?”
She smiled then, her eyes coming alive. Excited, I drove on.
“And the hayricks are burning right down to Tarn – remember Rebecca? Rockets most nights, too, but beautiful are the fires, as glow-worms, just as you said. Rebecca like I told you, done up in petticoats, looking for bad men to carry on poles. O, Tess, when you get better I will take you down to the Taf, and I will kiss you and you will weave a rush hat for me just like you did last spring, remember?”
But she was not really listening now, though her eyes were full on my face.
“O, God,” I said, and wept.
Just once she spoke, scarcely heard it:
“Jethro,” and she took my hand and held it against her breast.
Wearing the birthday brooch, too, just seen it.
Soft her breast on the tips of my fingers, cold her lips in that autumn of fire.
I kissed her.
Dear little woman.
CHAPTER 13
THE TIME for lovering is spring but they do things different round our way. The blood heats up in November, it seems, and thins itself down for May, though Morfydd reckoned the sport was all the year round.
One or two going daft in our village. Tom the Faith for one – dying for our mam, pitiful to see him, and Waldo Rees Bailiff likewise, the pair of them losing weight. Very rarely apart, these two, which is strange for chalk and cheese, with only one thing in common – the Black Boar tavern ale, though Tom the Faith went there for pints and Waldo for Gipsy May.
A malign
ed man was Tom Griffiths the Faith, with a wedded-all-over look since my mother came to Cae White. He lived on the banks of the Tywi in a cottage old enough for savages. Grandfer’s height but big in the stomach, Tom’s pipe was his only friend; his music the clatter of his dead wife’s teacups, his memories the swish of her shuttle when spinning. Sitting by his winter fires with the rushes of the river tapping his window, Tom’s short life with Martha was the past, present and future in the hands of the Lord. For Tom the Faith knew it all, from Genesis to Revelation and back return journey, and every Sunday at dawn he would stand up to his neck in the river for an hour to atone for the sins of the village. Cherubim and Seraphim mated, was Tom, till he sighed at our mam and went on the hops.
Different was Waldo Rees Bailiff; most sure of himself, this one, with the spiked moustache and fob watch and all the things that go to make up gentry save gentility. Virgin pure, too, saving himself for the right lady, he said, though Morfydd reckoned she was safer with Grandfer’s stallion than trusting herself to Waldo, who spent a shilling a week on Gipsy May.
Tom Griffiths first. Did things properly, give him credit; very spruced up and collared was Tom, fortified well by the smell of his breath. And he stood at the door in splendour, did Tom, bowing double, his hat sweeping the doorstep.
“What the hell does he want?” asked Grandfer, peeping over the top of the Cambrian.
“It is only a social visit, mind,” said Tom, and the heels of his boots were hitting like clappers.
“Wants our mam,” said Morfydd.
“Good God,” said Grandfer. “Honey and Hornets. Grant me release. This is a house of virgins, Tom Griffiths, and I will not have it otherwise. I know you biblicals.”
“Never mind Grandfer,” said Morfydd, “come you in, Tom Griffiths,” she having a sneaking regard for Tom because he worked among the poor.
“I will not come in, never mind,” said Tom, crimson. “Just passing, I was, and hoping for an appointment with Mrs Mortymer, no offence, she being a widow lady.”
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