Tirzah and the Prince of Crows

by Deborah Kay Davies

  Blessed Are the Pure in Heart

  (Matthew 5:8)

  In the morning Tirzah wakes to the sound of heavy rain at the bedroom window. Oh, flipping misery, she thinks, why do you always make that noise? Getting up is going to take a huge effort; her bedclothes are a dead weight. It’s as if they have been rained on all night. She bends her legs, pushes the covers down and gets out, stiffly inching her way upright. Then she remembers everything, and her heart swells with misery. She can’t go to school because she has to see the elders. Her bedroom clock says seven o’clock. What will she do all morning? She is surprised that Derry is still in the bathroom, splashing and whistling. Tirzah huddles on the top stair. Derry doesn’t care about any of us, Tirzah realises. He’s his own boss. He’s part of a different world and isn’t interested in the smallest thing to do with ours. This thought makes her bolder somehow, and she knocks the door eventually. He opens it wide. What? he asks. Can’t a bloke even do his bleedin’ ablutions on his day off in this house without being ’arrassed by somebody?

  Tirzah catches a glimpse of the small tufts of hair sprouting like eyelashes above each barely visible nipple, and can’t help looking down at the fuzz climbing from his pyjama waistband towards his belly button. I’m so sorry, she stammers, pink with awkwardness. It’s just that I have to get ready. She inhales deodorant and another, more embarrassing smell. Yeah, Derry says, looping his towel around his shoulders, I just done a dump. He grins and makes her squeeze past him in the doorway. And where were you the other night? he asks, nudging her with his naked elbow. Anybody would have thought the sun had fallen out of the sky, the commotion around here. Tirzah’s face is burning, and she wants to slam the door on him, but he won’t move. I even had a stroll around myself, looking for you. Tirzah gives him a bleak look. Oh, really? she asks. Seriously, he continues, blushing slightly. I was dead worried. Then he seems to recover himself and gives her one of his thorough looking-overs, the tip of his tongue poking out. She can only stand and continue to look into his eyes, remembering her terrible money-earning plan. And here he is, she thinks, with not a penny to be seen. Deary, deary me, he continues as he turns away, shaking his head. What you need is someone to look after you, an’ tha’s the truth.

  Tirzah locks the bathroom door and immediately opens the window wide. She gags, noticing two crinkly hairs on the toilet seat. Derry is such a funny mixture, she thinks. Why can’t people be one thing or the other? Trying to understand them is like balancing on a long, drooping elastic band held between two mountains. In the bathroom cabinet mirror she looks at her reflection: the tip of her nose is red, and her eyes are watering. There is a red, two-inch graze on her cheek, crooked and angry. She turns away and runs a bath. The water never gets comfortably hot, but when there is enough to cover her feet and ankles she climbs in and tries to get a lather going in her sponge.

  Sitting in the cool water, she wishes she could really run away. No one believes me, she whispers into the echoey bathroom. But really, I don’t think I’ve ever done anything wrong, apart from making Mam and Dada worry. She is so unhappy she can’t rouse herself to get out of the bath and wee, and watches as the cloud of urine, warmer than the bath water, quivers out from between her thighs. Poor me, she thinks, examining her damaged legs and innocent-looking toes; here I am, sitting in my own wee, and nobody cares. Her stomach is empty and growling. Her head is so heavy she has to concentrate to keep it in place. She hauls herself out and rewraps her dressing gown tightly. Even though she is starving she forces herself to stay in her room until twelve, taking as much time as she can to get dressed and dry her hair.

  In the kitchen her mother is standing at the stove. There you are, she says, sounding businesslike, and throws a towel over her shoulder. She lifts a slotted spoon out of a small pan and slides two ragged, domed eggs on to a plate, and says over her shoulder, I’ve made you a nice little something. Poached eggs on toast are good and digestible. Now then! I want you to eat them both, and no jawing about it. Tirzah sinks into a chair. Her mother stands with the laden plate. But, Tirzah starts to say, and her mother lifts a hand to stop her. Tirzah, she says, setting the plate down and now tucking the hand towel into the waistband of her apron as she turns back to the stove. For once in your sorry life, do as you are told.

  Tirzah starts to nibble her toast, and suddenly she can’t eat her breakfast quickly enough. The soft egg yolks taste so creamy, almost like molten cheese; it’s as if she has never eaten them before. She is struck by how easy it is to eat and bathe, things like that, when she has done something so wrong. Her mother comes to the table, bringing two cups of tea with her. There you are, she says, nodding towards Tirzah’s scraped-clean plate. They sit together. Rain drums on the sloping roof of the kitchen, and it’s so dark they need the light on. Tirzah’s mother tells her she has taken breakfast up to Dada earlier, but he didn’t eat it. He’s been in that old study of his all night and all morning, she says, holding her cup in front of her mouth with two hands. Not a morsel has passed that man’s lips for over twenty-four hours. And he hasn’t gone in to work. Tirzah swallows the lump in her throat. Mam, she says, so low her mother has to lean forward. I am sorry to have made you and Dada so worried. I got lost in the woods and made a nest to sleep in, that’s all. That’s all? her mother says. That sounds like an awful lot to me, madam.

  Tirzah sends her mind to the mountain, and the hiding place in the forest. She curls up in the roots of the tree she and Osian lay under, and inhales the pines and the cold earth’s unhurried breath. For an illuminated, blessed moment she glimpses again that the whole world is out there and indifferent to all the fuss down in these narrow streets. All the straight-backed pews and mildewed hymnals, ham sandwiches and kettles in the chapel kitchen, the Bible stickers the juniors collect so eagerly each week: they are only fragments of the wonderful world. It’s a vision so fleeting, like a lone picture glimpsed in a fanned-through book, that she almost misses it. She is left with only the effect the picture made.

  Tirzah begins to feel calm, happy even. She is surprised, but the mood is so engrossing she isn’t concerned by her lack of nerves. She gazes with a new-found love at her rattled mother. What do you think the elders will say to me? she asks idly. Her mother puts her cup down and examines Tirzah with narrowed eyes, placing her hand on Tirzah’s forehead. Of course, you are not the ticket today, she says almost to herself. Are you poorly? No, Mama. I am absolutely, completely all right, Tirzah answers. Her mother folds both lips in on themselves. Navy blue! she blurts, immediately covering her mouth with a reddened hand. Now look what you’ve made me say. Swearing it is; doesn’t matter what the actual words are. God knows the intent. Tirzah can’t help smiling. And take that look off your face, her mother says. Or I’ll wipe it off for you. Of course I worry. She pulls a sharply ironed hankie out of an apron pocket and dabs her eyes. And you should too. Silly, silly girl. I can hardly stand to look at you.

  Tirzah can only lean across the crumb-strewn table and pat her mother’s hand. I’m sorry, Mam, she whispers. Please don’t be angry with me. Her mother searches her face with wet eyes. You seem to be unaware I was once a girl just like you, cariad, she says, almost shyly, stroking Tirzah’s cheek. I do know how you feel sometimes. But, Mam, Tirzah says, jerking her hand away. I haven’t done anything really wrong. I’m sure of it now. She refuses to think about her mother as a young girl anything like herself. Her mother shakes her head and pushes the hankie against her mouth, silently weeping. Don’t let your father hear that sort of hardened talk, she says. It will break his heart. Tirzah comes around to kiss the top of her mother’s head. She can’t explain. It’s as if she were living amongst a group of people to whom she looks identical, but she’s another species entirely. Still, she thinks, putting her coat and shoes on, this business is most unpleasant, even if I am an alien of some sort. Slipping her hand in her pocket, she finds the forgotten jar of Bovril and slips it into the hall glove drawer.

  In the narrow passage lined
with scripture texts in ornate frames, Tirzah pauses, looking up the stairs. Derry comes out of his room and she watches his loose-limbed descent. Hiya, he says, brushing against her coat as he goes past. But at the front door he stops and looks back. Good luck, you. He gives her a smiling nod. Don’t let the buggers grind you down. The slam of the door behind him bounces along the tiled floor, making Tirzah’s armpits tingle. In the hall he leaves a breath of cigarette smoke and mint chewing gum. The front-room clock keeps up its usual uneven tick-tock, and Tirzah listens to it fighting – fast, then slow, fast, then slow – always the same, and to the faint noise of her mother washing the kitchen floor. When she’s ready she goes up, trying not to make a sound, and stands outside her father’s study. Dada, she calls quietly, knocking the door. Dada, it’s me. From inside the room there is a silence so profound that it seems to press like deep water on her eardrums. Can I come in, Dada? she asks, tapping with her fingertips, pressing her straining ear to the door. Won’t you talk to me for a minute? Dada? She waits a few seconds, then taps again. I’m going now, Dada, she says, her lips against the wood. Goodbye. Someone is moving in the room, but nothing else happens.

  Tirzah’s umbrella is red. Along the street, in every netted front-room window she passes, the scarlet flower of her umbrella blooms for a moment. The smells of Monday fry-up drift out through windows. Soon her shoes are dark with water, and her feet freezing, even though it’s now June. Osian is waiting in his doorway. She stops to look at him, realising he’s lost weight. Tirzah, he calls, and comes out into the rain to hold her free hand, tiptoeing because he’s only wearing slippers on his feet. Her eyes rest upon his dear face. She stands under her umbrella and waits for him to speak. Osian keeps checking up and down the street. What is it, Osian? she asks, looking at him warily. It’s as if someone has taken a cloth and wiped their friendship away. Hastily he says he knows she is a good girl deep down. But, Tirzah, he goes on, squeezing her shoulder so tightly it hurts, our hearts are desperately wicked.

  Tirzah looks at her hand grasping the umbrella, wondering at the way it looks pinker than usual. Like a doll’s, or even a false hand, she thinks, a little scared. But no, it’s all right: it’s just the reflection of the red umbrella fabric on her skin. She can’t believe what Osian is saying. It’s still difficult to get used to the idea that someone has swapped this fidgety person with the real Osian she loved. The rain is wetting his new fringe, separating it into strands. You’ve had all your lovely hair cut off, she says, and raises her free hand to touch it. He shies away, and she sees a white strip of skin on his forehead where the sun couldn’t reach until now. Have you got anything to be ashamed of? he says. Confess. Let me help you find your way back to the fold. No, I don’t need to confess, she tells him, smitten by his question, his unsureness. And I’m able to find my own way back to the fold, if that’s what I want to do. Anyway, why don’t you fry your own fish? You have your own troubles, she adds. But he’s looking back into the dark hallway, not listening. I have to go now, he says, and dashes through his front door without saying goodbye. Everyone is shutting their door on me today, Tirzah thinks.

  On she climbs to the manse, and now she remembers Brân with his painted face, and the way he gave her a tin cup of something meaty he had killed and cooked. He was pleased to do it, she could tell. They’d sat in his leafy, feathery wigwam wreathed in smoke, while he told her how he’d built it and what life was like in the woods. Tirzah watched his glowing grey eyes and sharp teeth catching the firelight each time he grinned. This was the good Brân, but she knew there were other versions, and some of them were very different. Probably everybody has different versions of themselves, all layered up inside. She recalls how she spat out brittle, needle-like bones when he was busy tending the flames, not wanting to hurt his feelings. Outside, the trees sighed and rustled through the night, but she and Brân, wrapped in odds and ends, had slept either side of the fire. As she nears the bigger houses higher up the valley, she tells herself there is nothing surprising about the fact that Brân is good and bad in parts. Everyone’s a funny mixture.

  The manse’s steep front garden is overgrown with a sprawling, waxy-leaved shrub that looks as if someone has thrown splotches of yellow paint at it. Tall steps climb to the front door. It’s a long hike, and Tirzah is gasping when she gets there. She has to put down her brolly and use both hands to lift the lion-faced brass knocker. There are four empty milk bottles beside the door, one with a sodden note for the milkman in its neck. Flecks of rain like sprinkled rice pellets are still falling into the puddles beyond the porch as she waits, looking down on the village. Far below is the roof of her own house, and just under that roof she knows there is a book-filled room, smelling of paraffin and the Fisherman’s Friend sweets her father likes to crunch when he’s reading Spurgeon or some old Puritan.

  Poor Dada, she thinks. Doesn’t he know none of this is really that important? He acts as if God was his jailer and had to be sucked up to, or there would be no privileges. She pictures him kneeling by his desk, telling God all about the disappointment a father like himself has in a daughter like Tirzah. He’s probably apologising for me, she thinks. Telling God it’s not His servant’s fault, how he’s done his best, to no avail. What must it be like always to expect the worst of people? Even your own daughter? She’s nonplussed for a moment when the door opens, and Pastor stands there, his wispy hair in three separate bands across his scalp, his grey cardigan buttoned up, and his tie tightly knotted. Tirzah looks at his serious black shoes gleaming and the way his twelve toes pull them out of shape. Come you inside, Tirzah, he says, clasping his hands. This is indeed a sad day.

  Thy Elders and Thy Judges Shall Come Forth

  (Deuteronomy 21:2)

  No one asks Tirzah to take off her wet coat, no one invites her to sit down, so she stands in Pastor’s study and drips on to the carpet. Empty cups and a crumb-pocked plate with one curling sandwich at its edge sit on the big desk. Arranged in a line are the four elders, sitting on tall-backed chairs. To Tirzah they are unknown, and yet familiar; these are the men who sit on the platform below the pulpit on a Sunday and thunder out the hymns. They don’t need hymn books; they know everything there is to know. Even though she watches them every week as they stalk out before Pastor from the vestry, they are strangers to her, just columns of black fabric topped with grey or white hair. She supposes they are holy. Now they sit, each holding an open Bible. One is blowing his nose, and after holding his hankie up so he can examine its contents, spends some time wiping and rewiping. Pastor, who has a chair behind his desk, doesn’t sit at all. He wanders around the big, book-gloomy room, his forehead corrugated and his lips a narrow line.

  There is a chair facing the elders for Tirzah. Finally, when the silence in the room becomes so ponderous she thinks she will fall to the floor under the weight of it, Pastor stops pacing around in front of his bookshelves and gestures for her to be seated. Brethren, he says, let us pray and ask the Lord’s guidance in this matter. The rain-soaked material of Tirzah’s coat is seeping through her skirt and into her knickers. It’s a ticklish sensation. One of the elders begins to pray, but to Tirzah his words are lost from the moment they leave his mouth and emerge into the room. Like moths rising from a dusty old drawer, the words flutter down to the worn rug, then up to the rows of books and back again. With each change in direction they mean less and less. How strange, she thinks, that I am in this room, listening to these people. With an effort she remembers why. It’s so silly. I know I shouldn’t have been away a whole night, but all I did was sleep in a tent of feathers and twigs in the woods, she thinks. And now look what’s happened.

  Soon there is silence in the room again, and with a start Tirzah realises someone has asked her a question. The elders are waiting, but it is impossible for her to answer. Now then, Tirzah, Pastor says briskly, these are the facts: you left the bosom of your family and went heaven knows where. You were not seen again till the following day. What are you ashamed of? There
is another silence. Come, come, Pastor says, talking as if she were backward. You will feel better when you tell us what you were doing. But Tirzah suddenly knows this is not true. For a start, these men will not believe her, and more importantly, for now, nobody is aware of Brân and his home in the woods. She remembers how happy he seemed, talking about his little tent, content with his crows. She can imagine how a bunch of do-gooders would troop through the trees, trampling the plants, sending the birds screaming, and root him out. He would know she had betrayed him. Brân is not hurting anyone, she thinks, deliberately forgetting some things and picturing his glinting eyes and lean brown cheeks grinning in the firelight. And neither am I. She wants to hold this secret close.

  Pastor is starting to get a little uncomfortable. I’ve known you all your life, he says, his voice sounding as if he might cry. Let us deal with this and put it on the altar of contrition. The Lord is compassionate. Tirzah is aware that her damp dress and underclothes are thoroughly stuck to her thighs now. Even so, it’s as if a warm flame is burning in her chest. Dear Pastor, she says. There is nothing to tell. I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of. Unless getting lost and falling asleep is a sin now? One of the elders slaps both hands down on his knees. All the rest start talking over each other. Tirzah can sense they are at once thrilled and disappointed. I was lost, and decided to sleep in the woods, that’s all, she says again, loudly, looking from one bearded, sceptical face to another. Wayward girls used to be chased up the mountainside by good, chapel-going people brandishing Bibles. A couple of the elders look so old they might well have been around in those days. But it’s funny to think that if the mountain were to be her punishment, she wouldn’t mind one little bit.

  Pastor falls to his knees and loudly prays for Tirzah’s soul. Have mercy on this poor, hard-hearted girl, he says, raising an arm and clenching thin air spasmodically. She is a smoking flax. Tirzah watches the activity in the room, lost in a warm trance, willing to wait and see what happens next. She thinks about Osian, his suspicious gaze under her red umbrella, how he took her hand and said he thought she was a good girl but that we are all deceivers, of ourselves and others; she thinks of her parents, keeping themselves busy at home while they wait for a judgement. The flame that softly glows in her chest spreads to fill her body. She looks at Pastor’s screwed-up eyes and the anguished men pleading fervently, and sees how fearful they are for her. She wants to assure them that everything’s all right. But it’s no use.