by Alis Hawkins
‘How did you fare?’ she asked, as we sat down.
‘We were able to speak with Mr Rowland senior,’ I said. ‘It seems he has suffered a decline in his fortunes in recent times.’
I told her what we knew of the chandlery’s move to a less prominent position and the necessity of Mrs Rowland’s managing the shop. ‘Her husband is a sad soul,’ I concluded. ‘Crippled by arthritis and all but refusing to acknowledge that he ever had a son.’
‘Did you discover the cause of the rift between them?’ Miss Gwatkyn asked, pouring the tea that had just arrived.
‘No. Mr Rowland senior didn’t wish to speak to us and his wife – who’s not Nicholas Rowland’s mother – seems to know nothing of why he left Aberaeron. All she knows is that he has never returned and her husband refuses to speak of him.’
I hesitated before asking the question that John’s suspicions had raised; it felt indelicate. ‘Did Mr Rowland ever talk to you,’ I began, ‘about the damage to his hands? Dr Reckitt is quite convinced that he was not born with the deformity.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘Nicholas didn’t volunteer any information on the subject and I didn’t like to ask.’ She paused to take a sip of her tea. ‘It wasn’t that he tried to hide it. For instance, when he first came to me to talk about setting up his school, he freely acknowledged that he didn’t have full use of his hands and would need assistance.’ She put her cup down and I felt her gaze on me.
Not wishing to try and meet her eye only to fail and induce pity, I fixed the whirlpool on the tablecloth and looked over it at the blue and white cup in front of her. ‘From what we’ve just been told,’ I said, ‘it seems that whatever happened to damage his hands might be the cause of Mr Rowland’s leaving Aberaeron.’
Miss Gwatkyn did not reply straight away but sipped once more at her tea. ‘I see.’
Again, I hesitated before speaking. ‘John thinks Mr Rowland senior might have been responsible. That what is given out as an accident with a trapdoor was actually deliberate.’
Miss Gwatkyn turned to John. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘The story we were told just seemed unlikely.’
At her request, John repeated Mrs Rowland’s second-hand account and I was struck, as always, by his remarkable facility for remembering, verbatim, anything he had heard.
‘Nicholas never spoke of his family,’ Miss Gwatkyn said, when John had finished. ‘I enquired after them, as one does, when we first met, only to be told that that part of his life was over. That he and his father were estranged beyond hope of reconciliation. Naturally, I did not raise the subject again.’ She paused as if to illustrate her point. ‘Shall we order some lunch?’
In London, a hungry man might choose between any number of dining facilities – from the stained trestle tables, uncomfortable box booths and steel-pronged cutlery of the slapdash and squalid lower end, to the pristine linen, impeccable serving men and electro-plated cutlery of the likes of Simpson’s – but I had not expected much of Aberaeron. So it was a delightful surprise when a courteous young man presented us with a very creditable lunch which we consumed from fine china on a table draped in a perfectly glowing cloth. Evidently, it was not just Aberaeron’s architecture that was determinedly à la mode.
Over our cold pie, cheese and piccalilli, Miss Gwatkyn steered away from the subject of Nicholas Rowland and asked whether I felt ready to speak to the electorate at the public meeting in Tregaron on Saturday. ‘Presumably,’ she said, without any apparent embarrassment, ‘you must prepare better than your rivals as you cannot rely on notes to prompt you?’
‘I’m hoping that the skills I learned as a barrister will stand me in good stead. When you’re defending a man, you must have all the facts committed to memory so that you can produce the necessary one at will.’
Unlike Minnever, Miss Gwatkyn accepted that the skills of a barrister and an electioneer might be comparable, for which I was grateful. But, in truth, I had slept poorly for several nights now, as I gave speech after speech in my head, each making different points, none of which satisfied me and would not, I was quite sure, satisfy a rowdy mob.
‘It’s interesting to see the parties’ different strategies for the meeting,’ John said. ‘Mr Minnever – the Liberal Party agent – is determined to introduce Harry to every voter he can lay hands on before the poll. But there’s been no sign of the Tories or their candidate.’
It was true; Mr Montague Caldicot had evidently seen no need to pre-empt his first encounter with the electorate by coming to Tregaron and making himself generally agreeable and, though Minnever had poured scorn on ‘poor Party strategy’, it seemed to me that my rival’s absence might be an indication of Tory confidence. I asked Miss Gwatkyn whether she was acquainted with Caldicot.
‘No, not personally. I’m acquainted with the family, of course, but Montague I know only at second hand.’
I waited, but she said no more. ‘Would it be indelicate to ask what you know of him?’
Miss Gwatkyn spent some moments folding her napkin. ‘Not very much, I’m afraid. But, coincidentally, he did feature, indirectly, in the conversation we had when you came to see me at Alltybela.’ She laid the folded napkin down on to the tablecloth, and let her hand remain on top of it. ‘He was the Cardiganshire gentleman who suggested Llanddewi Brefi as a suitable setting for Nicholas’s school.’
‘Caldicot knew Rowland?’ I hoped I did not sound as astonished as I felt.
‘I believe they had mutual friends in London.’
What friends, I wondered, would a son of the landed gentry share with an impoverished teacher? But then I recalled that Rowland had taught at University College. The idea that Caldicot might be interested in science or philosophy was, I must confess, a little disconcerting; it made him seem a far more formidable opponent.
‘I see. In that case I should speak to him. It’s possible that he might have information on Mr Rowland’s connections in Cardiganshire.’
‘I think that very unlikely,’ Miss Gwatkyn said. ‘I don’t believe they were anything more than casual acquaintances.’
‘They didn’t maintain any association here?’
‘Not to my knowledge. Mr Caldicot and his wife are only very recently returned to the family seat at Llysrheidol. Presumably to be seen to be resident in the county before the election.’ She smiled, wryly.
‘And, previously, they lived in London?’
‘Montague certainly maintained a house there and I believe that’s where his wife lived. But he had a commission in the army so he may well have been in London only sporadically, himself.’
‘If he was a soldier, I assume he’s not the heir? He hasn’t come home to inherit?’
‘No, he has an older brother. Not that there seems to be any immediate prospect of anybody inheriting. Their father’s as vigorous and determined as ever.’ She paused and I wondered whether she glanced in my direction. ‘A man after your late father’s heart, actually. A resolute agricultural improver.’
Miss Gwatkyn was, I noticed, far more comfortable talking about Caldicot senior than she was to discuss Montague.
‘And my opponent?’ I asked. ‘What of him?’
She sighed. ‘You are determined to force me into indiscretion, Mr Probert-Lloyd.’
‘Not at all! I do beg your pardon.’
I thought I detected a sudden smile on her face but I was, possibly, seeing what I wished to see. ‘Oh, don’t mention it. It’s pleasant not to be treated as if one were made of glass.’ Having accepted my apology, I thought she would change the subject but she did not. ‘I dare say, if he were still alive, your father would have been able to give you the information you’re looking for.’
‘So,’ I said, carefully taking her lead, ‘were my father able to pass on such information, what would he tell me?’
At the edge of the whirlpool, I watched Phoebe Gwatkyn’s fingers moving restlessly on the heavy, white tablecloth. Gathering crumbs together, possibly. Though we were s
itting next to the window, the room faced north and the light was not bright, making it even more difficult than usual for me to interpret small movements.
‘Howell Caldicot of Llysrheidol has given everybody to understand that his son resigned his commission so that he could take up a career in politics,’ she said, finally. ‘But I believe it’s common knowledge amongst his peers that Montague was cashiered from his regiment.’
Miss Gwatkyn might choose to believe that my father would have repeated such information, but I knew with absolute certainty that he would not. Even had he known it to be true, he would have regarded speaking of it as the most egregious discourtesy.
‘May I ask whether the reason for his drumming-out is also common knowledge?’
The crumb-gathering continued unabated. ‘Not to me.’
Whatever the reason, it must have been something significant; no officer was cashiered for a trifle and the loss of both money and face was considerable.
This information suggested that Caldicot’s candidacy for the post of coroner, far from being a stepping stone to membership of parliament, was, in fact, a response to an urgent need for a respectable public office. And the fact that that office was here, in Cardiganshire, was all to the good. Short of crossing the Irish Sea, it was scarcely possible to be any further removed from metropolitan scrutiny.
‘What is common knowledge,’ Miss Gwatkyn added, unexpectedly, ‘is that Montague’s wife, Cecile, is in no way reconciled to her exile from London. She wishes to return with all possible speed.’
The picture became clearer still. Montague Caldicot would remain in the Teifi Valley only for as long as it took society’s attention to move on to some other scandal, before appointing a deputy and quietly removing his establishment back to London. Deputies, and the absentees who nominated them, might be unpopular but, once elected, a coroner did not need to court public approval.
Until this afternoon, I had assumed that I would not meet Caldicot until we shared the stage in Tregaron marketplace at the weekend. However, given that he had been acquainted with Nicholas Rowland, I felt that John and I would be well advised to pay him a visit before the inquest to see whether he could shed any light on the teacher’s wider circle of acquaintance. Rowland might have spent the previous three years living in a cowshed but the scant details of his life so far suggested that he had been anything but a conventional schoolmaster.
I turned back to Miss Gwatkyn. ‘How long would it take to travel from Tregaron to see Caldicot at Llysrheidol?’
John
We’d been invited to stay at Alltybela that night and, by the time we’d got back and changed, there was only half an hour or so before Miss Gwatkyn joined us for dinner. That was normally the time when Harry sneaked off to write to Lydia Howell but, as she was probably already on her way here, he asked me if I’d read the newspaper to him. ‘I think there’s one over there,’ he pointed, ‘on the table where the lamp is?’
As I might’ve guessed, now I’d got to know Miss Gwatkyn a bit better, the newspaper was some dissenting, liberal rant-sheet. I opened it up and ran my eyes down the columns, looking for something that’d interest Harry. It wasn’t half a minute before my fingers were black and I was worrying about smearing newsprint on to Miss Gwatkyn’s table linen.
‘There’s a thing here about the census,’ I told him. ‘Want to know what they think?’
‘Which paper is it?’
I told him and he laughed. ‘Their views’ll be an antidote to Reckitt’s, I’m sure!’
Dr Reckitt had been all for the new, improved census. According to him, it wasn’t just a tax-revenue head-counting exercise any more. Now we’d have what he called ‘real data’. Well, we wouldn’t have it, obviously. Nobody’d see his blessed data for another fifty years except the civil servants and God alone knew what they were going to do with it.
I scanned the tiny print. ‘No,’ I said, ‘they don’t agree with Reckitt in any way whatsoever. The notion that the registration districts’ chillingly-titled “enumerators” can simply deliver census forms on Saturday, expect householders to complete them on Sunday, and collect the resulting information, neatly transcribed, on Monday is simply laughable,’ I read. ‘And, frankly, insulting. For the forms are all in English. A language of which upwards of fifty per cent of the working people in our county have insufficient grasp even to understand the words “head of household” or “occupation”. And, even were they to understand them, are they masters of sufficient literacy to read such words or inscribe their responses correctly? Until the government sees fit to provide the whole population with a decent education at the state’s expense, this intrusion should cease. No Welshman should be humiliated on his own hearth by having to ask the enumerator, a person with whom, in all likelihood, he will be acquainted, for help in recording the most intimate details of his family. The births of his children, the age of his wife, the words he must muster up to describe his own occupation, whether he and all his household were born in the county or elsewhere – all must be recorded for a government that cares not a jot for him as long as he pays his taxes and obeys the law.’
Harry grinned. ‘He’s right. I don’t suppose people’d be happy having to ask Simi Jones for help filling in their form, would they?’
‘Nobody’d have to ask him. Thanks to Rowland, the children would’ve been able to fill in the forms if their parents couldn’t.’
‘Did you do that?’ he asked. ‘In the last census?’
The previous Sunday, when I’d been recording the details of the whole Glanteifi household, Harry’d asked me whether I remembered the previous census but not whether I’d had to do the writing for Dada. Had he only just remembered the kind of home I came from? Or did he think that me mentioning Llanddewi’s children was an invitation to talk about it?
‘My father could read and write, thank you.’
‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply…’ Harry trailed off. Of course he’d meant to imply. As it happened, he wasn’t far off the truth. I’d exaggerated. My father could read Welsh but not English and his writing hadn’t been good enough for forms. Not for anything except signing his name, truth be told.
‘Mind, I wrote a nice hand, even then,’ I said, to let him off the hook of his embarrassment, ‘so he got me to do it.’
William Davies, 30, tenant farmer
Nancy Davies, 30
John Davies, 9
Sali-Ann Davies, 4
My parents hadn’t both been thirty as a matter of fact – Dada’d been thirty-four and Mam thirty-two but you were supposed to round down to the nearest five years for everybody over fifteen. Not on the recent one, though. No females had been able to present themselves as younger than they were on that one, not when they’d had to give their actual date of birth.
I wondered if the government understood how many people didn’t know the year they were born. If you didn’t have a family Bible to write it in, it was easy to forget. You might remember the day, but not the year. Now, of course, the government knew. Everybody born for the last fourteen years was supposed to’ve had the day of their birth registered, weren’t they?
Would the recording officers check, I wondered – see if the birth registers matched the census? If they checked, they’d know that some people still weren’t getting round to registering their babies. How many children would there be on the census that the government knew nothing about?
Not that it’d make any difference. They weren’t suddenly going to say, ‘Oh dear, look at the number of children in Cardiganshire – we’d better see about some schools over there,’ were they?
The government didn’t care about what happened to us. As long as we paid our taxes and didn’t disturb the peace. And as long as we didn’t insist on speaking our barbaric, immoral language, of course.
We were just settling down to dinner when a maid came in. She gave Miss Gwatkyn a worried curtsey, then whispered something to the butler. He sent her away, crossed the r
oom and bent down to murmur something in his mistress’s ear.
Whatever the message was, Miss Gwatkyn was surprised, I could see that. She didn’t say anything to us while dinner was being served but, once the butler and the maids were gone and we just had one footman in attendance, she took a sip of wine and looked over at me.
‘Simi Jones, the plwyfwas, has sent word that the ceffyl pren is to be carried tonight in the village.’
I opened my mouth to reply but Harry got there before me. Of course, she’d really been speaking to him. ‘Are you intending to stop it?’
By rights, Miss Gwatkyn should be sending a message to the magistrates because carrying the ceffyl pren was illegal. As far as the authorities were concerned, people gathering after dark in the open air for any purpose was an unlawful assembly and they were as hot as mustard on stopping the ceffyl pren being carried whenever they could. Which wasn’t often to be honest. Unless the local police officers got wind of it before the procession started, there was no way they’d be there in time, or in sufficient numbers, to do anything about it.
Miss Gwatkyn cut into her fish. ‘No. I make it my policy not to do that. If the people feel that they have a grievance which the law of the land cannot or will not address, then it seems to me that the ceffyl pren allows the boil to be lanced.’
