Hosts of Rebecca

by Alexander Cordell

  “O, Tomos!” exclaimed Mari.

  “To claim her,” boomed Tomos. “Five minutes late for this one would make a man a fool.”

  “And not a word to the family, mind,” I said. “Driving the men of the village demented, and pledged to another all the time!” I gripped his hand, drawing him in. “God bless you, Tomos. Mari, get the kettle on – Morfydd, lay the cloth. …”

  “Eh, hark at the head of the family!”

  “And am I not the head of the family – for who will give her away? Food first,” I cried, “and then Mam will walk him twice round the village hand in hand to settle the suitors!”

  “Suitors? What suitors?” rumbled Tomos, eyebrows bushing up.

  “Now, hush!” cried Mam, going scarlet.

  “Nothing to get bothered about, Tomos,” said Morfydd, sitting him down. “Just a little trouble with the men, it is – always the same when attractive widows are loose, but we kept her on the right path.”

  “O, Morfydd, you vixen,” said Mari.

  And there was Mam beside him wriggling and blushing as a young girl, with protests, giggles and peeps at his face. It is at such times that you see the woman in the mother, I think, as an eye behind the white starched apron that prises at the secrets. And the heart you see is young again, beating fast; no longer a couch for your head, that breast, but soft to the touch of another, and the lips that have scolded and crooned at you are strange lips for kissing, and red. Strange is the bitterness; that another should lie in her bed, turning at midnight in the place I had moulded. So great her lover.

  “Mind,” said Tomos, getting the spirit of it. “If she has been tempted in my absence I will make inquiries, and heaven help her if she is found wanting. More than one suitor, is it?”

  “Queueing at the door,” I said.

  “With flowers every Sunday,” added Morfydd. “Wearing out knees with biddings and beggings. Another five minutes and you’d have been too damned late, man.”

  “Tomos, Tomos! Do not heed them!” begged Mari, pulling at him. “Indelicate, they are.”

  “Not very considerate to your mother, I must say,” said Mam, sniffing.

  “O, Mam!” we cried while Tomos guffawed.

  “All very well,” she answered, well into her dignity. “But anyone human is likely to take it wrong.”

  Up with us then, dancing around her, pulling at her and kissing her, with Mari taking swipes at us and the boys screaming with joy. And there was Tomos with his arms around her consoling and teasing her in turn till we got her back mellow. Tea then, everyone happy, sitting at the table well into dusk, with Tomos telling us of his journey down and the state of things back home in Nanty.

  “And so,” said he, “after these years I return to you, fulfilling the promise I made to your mother that, should she remain unwed, I would offer her marriage and a home. …” Deep and pure was his voice as we sat in respectful silence. “I come in humility,” said he, “having little to offer save food and a bed, being of little money. Yet I offer her more than life itself if I offer her service in the way of the Lord. For did she not spring from the black cloth of the manse? And is it not true that service to His children is the true path to joy? Elianor …” and here he used her name the first time I had heard it since the days of my father. “Will you come back with me to Nantyglo, to the town you learned to hate because of your Hywel who died there, and give me the chance to teach you how to love it?”

  I stayed just long enough to see her touch his hand. Golden, this tongue, deep and sincere his offer. I knew my mother would not refuse him, this friend of my father, though I could not bear to see her accept a continuation of the poverty she had borne so long. Tomos would set her soul in diamonds, leaving her body to fend with sackcloth, yet this, I knew, was the way she would prefer it; this was how she was raised; as a flower pressed in the leaves of the Book of God, ending her life on the arm of Tomos, loving my father in the bed of his friend.

  Dusk and bats had dropped over Cae White as I stood there at the back listening to the laughter of Morfydd inside, the excited chatter of Mari, the protests of Richard and Jonathon as they were hooked up to bed. Silence was about me save for wind-whisper and the flea-scratching of crickets. The hens were still loose in the shippon, walking the path in their spiked, measured tread, the cockerel standing in his petrified confusion, mouthing unholy thoughts. I remembered the old days of Blaenafon where I was born and the care my mother took over her chickens; as a young girl she was then with her unbridled laughter; her childlike joy at finding an egg, her tears when my father brought in the lifeless body of a hen knocked off for the pot. The business of living had ground out the joy now, leaving her empty. Only in her God would she find solace, and Tomos had plenty of God. Heard the door click behind me as I moved to pen the chickens against the fox, and I turned. The mountain of Tomos drew beside me, and he gripped my shoulder, smiling down.

  “To you I come, Jethro, not to your sisters, for you are the man of the Mortymers now. To you I come for blessing.”

  “You have it in full,” I answered.

  “From your heart now?”

  “From my heart,” I said. “My father would have wanted it.”

  He leaned on the rail beside me, frowning into the dusk, and the rail creaked at him and I sensed the power of him, and some of the soul.

  “You will be good to her, Tomos.”

  He nodded.

  “And gentle, as my father was gentle.”

  “As my Father do hear me, I love her,” he whispered. “As He is witness, I have loved her from the day we met, Jethro, never coveting that which was my friend’s, but loving, nevertheless, and I seek no forgiveness since Man is twopenny clay. This I tell you now, as man to man, that I have not sought her with my body as I have sought other women in the days of my youth, and found them wanting. For I met her when the soul enmeshed the body, draining it of fire.” He chuckled deep, and grunted. “Just now you left too early for decency, and your mother, I could see, wondered why. But there are looks between men that need no explanation, so I came to tell you something to remember. In the bed of our marriage your mother wil hold me when I am dispirited or fierce to the injustices. This and her presence is all I seek of her, asking nothing more, save that she keeps me fed. Aye, the fire has died, Jethro, and it is peaceful, and she is in love with your father.”

  “You know this, then?”

  “She has never been short of a tongue. She made that clear four years back when I called at Christmas.”

  “Best you should know, Tomos.”

  “Aye.” He sighed. “A man such as Hywel do take some shifting.”

  “We will miss her. Could you not live here?”

  “No, my place is back with my people who need me. But there is a bed for any one of you, remember it. You will be welcome since I will be your father.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Jethro.” The tone of his voice turned me. “Jethro, another thing. Just now, on the stairs I spoke to Mari. You know about your brother?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. “When I heard of Iestyn’s death I hurried to tell Mari, for it was my duty. I owe the same duty to Morfydd and your mother, but I will not tell them. I stopped my mouth to them four years back, and I will not tell them now. Mari had to know because she was young and with her life before her, that is why I came that Christmas. But I will never tell your mother. Better for her to live in hope – already I have saved her years of grief. She believes he is in transportation for seven years. A lot can happen in three more years. You agree?”

  I shrugged.

  “And Mari?” he said.

  “What of Mari?”

  “She is in love with you, do you know?”

  I swung to him, searching for his eyes shadowed under the bushy brows.

  “She told you?” I whispered.

  “Aye.” He lit his pipe and played with the tinderbox. “Just now. And you love her, I hear it in your voice. Take he
r then, when you can afford it, but tread wary for youth is fire. Gently with her remember, until you are sure that Iestyn has gone. Hell it can be sitting in a kitchen with another man opposite.”

  I pitied him.

  “Two in one boat,” he said, grinning. “Though mine is but a ten year marriage, perhaps a little longer. Yours is for life.”

  He straightened then.

  “I am going back in now,” he said. “For women are as wary as cats at times like this. You coming?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But first I will lock the hens. Tomos. …”

  He turned, black in the coming of night, smiling.

  “Tomos, will you send Mari to me?”

  “God bless the loyalty and love in this house,” he said. “I will send her. She will help you catch the waywards hens, is it?”

  I waited until he was back in the kitchen then went into the shippon and gathered the hens. There by the henhouse I waited. I saw the door come open again; heard Mari’s footsteps.

  “Over by here,” I said, and she came.

  “The old cockerel again, is it?” she asked, peering about her.

  “They are all safe in bed,” I answered. “Mari …” and I took her hand.

  For the first time in my life I felt her near me.

  “Mari, Mari!” I whispered, and drew her into my arms.

  “Jethro!” she said as I kissed her.

  And her arms went about me hard and strong as I bent above her, kissing her, kissing her, and I knew the trembling of her. Warm were her lips, snatching at breath.

  “Jethro,” she said, but I heard no sound, just saw her lips. As rock were we to the pressure of mountains; locked; beating as one, together.

  Summer warm was the wind of the estuary, and the night was silver and rimming the clouds, the full moon shafting the sea with a broadsword of light. Wave-thunder came from the beach still heaped and despoiled from the low tide hunting of cockle-women, its forehead fringed with dark lines of weed. In my arbour of rocks above the beach I waited and great was the excitement within me, my heart thumping to the turn of the stones, waiting. Waiting for Mari at the end of the sheep track that led from Squire’s Reach.

  Eerie is the Burrows in moonlight, this place of rabbits and honeycombed with lairs; a refuge of steepled ears and screams: home of the fox, the bared teeth of vixens, the prancing death dances of stoats, the madbrained leapings of the March hares. And ghosts walk here, it is said. Here float the faces of murdered seamen, the souls of the sea, victims of plunder, walking out of the waves with seaweed for shrouds, in search of decent graves. Sitting alone I stared at the sea, seeing again the storm-tossed barques plunging to the swinging beacons of the criminal wreckers, wallowing, their decks awash, streaming to their doom on the outcrop rocks. And I saw again the falling cudgels, heard the screams of ancient crews as they staggered half drowned to the butchery of their brothers.

  But this place of wraiths is the arbour of lovers, for ghosts are forgotten in the heat of kisses, and because of its name the Burrows were free of peepers. One pair of eyes was enough to have us round the village. So I waited, dry in the mouth and trembling, for Mari to come.

  I fell to wondering, then, how many kisses had been given and taken in this haven clear of the sea, and new visions rose on the crested waves. Flying pennants I saw then; the curved bows of foreign invaders came driving in on the surf. Lance and mace flashed in fierce sunlight, swords were raised high. Invading banners I saw, strange tongues I heard, naked legs splashed to the shores as the horde drove in to lock in battle with the fur-clad ancients. Flung spears I saw, the skull-splitting hatchets, the new tide bloodstained to the wallowing dead. And then the conquest, the drunken goblets of the conquerors, the chained oars of the conquered creaking on the road to Rome.

  But then I thought of lovers, the giving and taking of foreign kisses in this place where I was waiting to make love to Mari. Roman warrior and Saxon maiden, conquering Greek and Celtic matron; mouth on mouth, breast against breast on this same sand while the same moon as mine, hooded and broody as a Benedictine monk, pulled up his skirts to shield his eyes as two became one. By here, just where I was sitting. Plaited hair I saw, the Nordic breast, the armour flung aside. I touched the rock beside me, feeling under my fingers its dumb eternity. O, that it had eyes and a mouth with which to speak that it might tell of my people from the time of the club; talk of the tears, the sighs, the laughter of children, the riven steel of the armour, the crumpled skirt. Here the invader, pining in his dreams of columned cities, has leaped to the arms of the humble cottager and buried his longing in the tumult of her breathing.

  “Jethro!”

  And the visions were banished in the shock of reality. Leaping up, I swung to her voice.

  Mari, standing above me, her hands clasped, smiling down.

  “You came!” I gasped.

  “But not for long, mind – Mam will soon miss me.”

  Joyful that we were together I reached up and lifted her down beside me, and we stood clasped, shivering at the sudden nearness after the barren years of standing apart.

  “Anyone see you?”

  “Good grief, I saw to that. Came on all fours round the edge of the Reach!” Holding my hands she looked about her, then up at the moon, her eyes coming wide and bright as if startled. “O, Jethro, what a lovely place!”

  “Secret,” I whispered, holding her. I felt her heart thumping, thumping.

  “And you behave,” she whispered back.

  “I’ve been doing that years,” I said. “O, Mari!”

  “Then another half an hour won’t do you any harm,” and she kissed my face. “What happens now?”

  “Down by here,” I said, squatting at her feet, patting sand.

  “O, aye?”

  The wind had her hair, whirling it about in a sudden warm gust from the sea, and she stood above me, tying it back, patting it, smoothing it, with downward flashes of smile, knowing her mastery.

  “Down here,” I said, dragging at her skirt.

  “Safer up standing. I know you Mortymers.”

  Gave her ten seconds to enjoy her mastery, then I rolled towards her snatching at her ankle and pulled her kneeling in a cry of laughter. Whirling like a sand-crab I was there beside her, and I lay there holding her helpless while she shivered and giggled. Young again, girlish again … the years of sitting and darning over, the barrier crumbling. I was just content to lie there holding her, my face above her, her lips an inch from mine, waiting. Waiting for the final crash of the barrier, the rolling dust of its storm to drift to the sea. And there was no sound but breathing and wavelap to the incoming tide. Eyes shut tight, her face was turned away; as Morfydd lying there; the same deep shadows of her cheek; black her lips in that misty light. Smoothing her hair, I lay, watching, contented at last, whole for the first time in my life, since she was near. Strange is love in these moments of quiet, this the proof of love; to lie without demanding. No jangle in this loving, no sweeping hands, no hotness then. I lowered my face to hers, and we lay, just breathing, listening to heartbeat, at peace. Wind-murmur was in the cave, and the sand beneath us thumping to the fist of the breakers, and I raised my head, seeing beyond the tangle of her hair an emblazoned sea of moonlight with the solitary sails of a lonely ship, three-masted, standing against a line of silver. And farther beyond were the wastes of the Atlantic, thousands of miles of nothingness to the seagull cries of the shores of Newfoundland, and farther still to Philadelphia where the ovens of iron flash at the sky. This my industry, the call of the iron; calling again as it forever called me. Strange the call at a time like this, crying to a man on the breast of a woman. Pittsburgh! The magic name where the molten stream flashes to a thousand moulds, and its red brick chimneys flame to the sky. Calling to the Welsh for its experts of iron, for the craftsmen who can set the curve of the furnace-arch, for the men who know the colour of the pilot flame before the cauldron is turned, the length of the firing-iron, the time to rake, to coal, the ore
to burn, the grade of limestone and thickness of layer; for the men who are tuned to the clang of the bar and chalk the cross that guarantees perfection. In the stink of coal and tollgate farming the call leaped high to start a new life.

  “What you thinking?” said Mari.

  I stirred, suddenly aware of her, ringing her waist with my arm, drawing her against me.

  “I am taking you away,” I said.

  “Aye?” she said.

  “Because I love you. Because I am sick of fighting.” I drew from her, and knelt, and she turned, cupping her chin on her elbow, following my finger.

  “Nothing between us and America. Look. Nothing but sea and more sea, ships and gulls and sky. Go as an arrow and you crawl out on sand, Mari – to a new land, to a new life. Cae White is finished, Mari. There is nothing left here except hunger and labour; no chance for your Jonathon, no promise for my children,” and I caught her hand, kissing it.

  “Next Sunday,” she said. “To travel costs money, sovereigns, mind, not shillings.”

  “Five pounds a head steerage, that is all,” I answered.

  “A fortune,” she said.

  “I will find it, somehow.”

  “What is this old steerage thing, then?” she asked.

  “Working the passage, girl. Scrubbing and waiting, rope-coiling, tarring and labouring – cheaper steerage, see.”

  “Eh, more labour, is it? Whee, I would rather go cabins.”

  “Gentry, is it? Peacock feathers and parasols, is it? You be content with steerage.”

  “You go steerage, then. I will go cabins.”

  “Then near thirty pounds between us if we tie Jonathon to the yard-arm – where the hell do you think I am getting thirty pounds from, woman?”

  “Got fifty,” said she, “all but two shillings.”

  “How many toes has a pig got?”

  “Take off your boots and count them,” said she. “Fifty pounds be mine all but two shillings.”

  “O, aye? Not that much money in the county of Carmarthen. Addled, you.”

  “So addled that I will give you every penny, man, if you kiss me proper. O, Jethro! Do I come down here for the town of Philadelphia, or for loving?”