Tirzah and the Prince of Crows

by Deborah Kay Davies

  Everyone is looking towards the pulpit, but Pastor is not to be seen. Tirzah positions herself so she can see him kneeling in prayer. There is a struggle across the room as people try to pick Mrs Hughes-Edwards up from the gap between the pews. Tirzah has to cover her mouth in case a blurt of laughter again tries to escape. What is wrong with me? she wonders. Laughing at someone else’s misfortune, when all this is happening? Two men are hauling up the heavy old lady, their hands under her armpits. As she rises and falls back again, someone repeatedly positions her straw hat. Tirzah has to bend over her Bible, stifling giggles again. Don’t upset yourself, her mother says. It’s all over now. Finally, Pastor appears behind the pulpit. Peace, he calls. Let us have peace in the sanctuary. Brân’s followers are sitting in the front row, very quiet now. And that applies to you little lot too, Pastor adds, studying them. I know a few of your parents, he says, and some are tidy people who will be shocked at your behaviour today. One boy starts to cry. Now then, Pastor goes on. Hush. Let us call upon the Lord, because we all need Him in our various ways today. Tirzah bows her head and prays fervently, asking for mercy for herself, for Brân, and as Pastor said, for everyone.

  Glad Tidings of Good Things

  (Isaiah 52:7)

  Tirzah can smell the burnt Sunday roast four doors away from their house when they finally make it home from chapel. It’s hard to believe what happened this morning. After Brân was removed, Pastor did not resume his interrupted sermon. He left in charge the elder who had blown his nose and examined his wet hankie the day she’d been called to the manse, and went to join Brân and the men in the vestry. The fellowship swayed and murmured like a field of wheat through Mr Brynmor-Evans’s talk. They did not join in with any gusto to the hymns he announced. His baritone trundled over them like a huge rolling boulder, and people’s voices were mere shovelled gravel in comparison. They were straining to hear what was going on behind the vestry door. In the end Mr Brynmor-Evans said, with barely suppressed scorn, that it didn’t take much opposition for some folk to lose their way. Narrow is the path, and the weak are easily drawn from it, he told them. After a hasty final hymn, he closed the interminable meeting, shaking his head at everyone. Tirzah and her mother filed out silently. All the way home, not one word passed between them.

  Now Tirzah is feeling scared and exposed. Surely it is obvious I am connected with Brân, she thinks. Or am I just feeling so guilty I can’t think straight? She takes off her cardigan and hangs it up on the back of the door. This roast has had it, her mother says, holding the smoking pan at arm’s length. We’ll have to think of something else. Tirzah’s father finally arrives, and sits in the easy chair, his head resting back on the antimacassar. Never have I seen such a desperate case, he says at last, when Tirzah’s mother returns from throwing the meat on to the compost heap. Why? she asks, wiping her hands. Whatever went on, Gwyll? Tirzah goes to sit next to her father. Did he say anything about anyone, I wonder? she asks, convinced now that he came to see her, then reddens at the way her parents look at her. What a funny question, her mother says, frowning. Funny-peculiar, I mean. She turns her attention back to her husband. It was like having a wild animal in there, he continues. I can’t explain. Poor thing, her mother says. With no one to look after him, I’m not surprised. Tirzah is surprised though: her mother has changed her tune. Not all that long ago she had been very keen to rid them of Mrs Rowland and her daughter. He landed me one on the jaw, mind, her father adds, rubbing his chin. Oh, Dada, Tirzah says, how awful. Didn’t hurt, actually, he tells them. That boy is as weak as a kitten, I would say. Tirzah listens, feeling as if someone has jabbed her heart with a penknife.

  Her mother decides while she’s frying up some bacon that it wouldn’t be right to have this makeshift meal in the dining room, it being Sunday. Tirzah puts the cutlery out on the kitchen table and fills a jug with water. More cosy in here anyway, her mother goes on, putting plates of bacon and bubble and squeak in front of them. Anyone for some baked beans? she asks, holding up a pan and a large spoon. Her soft, dark curls have flopped over her forehead, and her cheeks are flushed. Pile it on, Mair, there’s a good girl, her father says, buttering himself some bread. Famished, I am. Tirzah looks from one to the other of them and shakes her head. How could grown-ups behave this way? Nothing – it didn’t matter how upsetting – seemed to put them off their food. Maybe you get used to things when you become an adult. Her own throat clenched up when she first heard Brân outside the chapel door, and it hasn’t unclenched yet.

  Her father tells them how Brân ran, swearing, round and round the vestry, jumping from chair to chair, shadowed by his dog. She pictures Brân scattering feathers and ferns as he looked for a way out. How would the stuffy little room with its high window have seemed to him? He hadn’t been inside a building for months. The airy green woods were his home. What happened in the end? her mother asks, eyes fluid with tears. Pastor said to let him go, so I opened the side door, her father says, and he bolted. Gone, he was. Just like that. Pastor was very troubled. Tirzah pushes her plate away. Mam, she says, I’m going to lie down, but her parents barely notice. They are clearing the table so that they can kneel, resting their clasped hands on the seats of the kitchen chairs, and pray for Brân.

  On her bed, Tirzah thinks of Brân running back alone to the woods. She is too sad to cry, too dense with misery even to shift position; again, the thought of Brân weak as a kitten smites her for some reason. She recalls how thin and weak he had been, struggling to carry her to the stream. At the time she hadn’t cared how he was, but now she can see he was failing. This is all my fault. I should have stood up and gone to him, she realises. Maybe he was asking for help in his own mad way. Everything is such a terrible old mess. I can’t help anyone, not even myself. She is drifting off to sleep when there is a rumbling commotion inside her. Laying her hands on her belly, she imagines it to be the first stirrings of her tiny child. Or, she concedes, it could just be that she’s hungry. At least my baby is safe, tucked away under my heart, she thinks, picturing a smiling, potato-shaped blob with little white sprouting arms and legs somersaulting in the dark. I can do that one thing right, I should hope.

  When she goes down to breakfast in the morning there is an envelope on the mat by the front door. Picking it up she sees it has her name on it. The kitchen is empty; the kettle is still hot and her mother has left some bread for her to toast. She fires up the grill and slices herself two pieces. Then she pours a glass of milk. It’s not until she sits down and reaches for the butter that she pulls the envelope from her dressing-gown pocket and props it against the milk jug. Tirzah studies the writing on it; she knows who it is from. She places it back against the jug, realising her toast is burning. Flipping flip, she says, scraping the charred top layer from each slice into the sink. While she eats the spoilt toast she stares at the envelope. A reluctance to find out what’s inside is slowly paralysing her. When she’s finished eating, the thought of lifting her arm and doing things with her fingers seems out of the question, but when her mother comes in through the back door with the laundry basket, Tirzah snatches the envelope and dashes upstairs to dress.

  Later, rushing along the warm, windy street, Tirzah is pelted with a sudden squall. The raindrops are blood-heat, and she doesn’t mind her dress and hair getting wet. The sun is uneasy, jumping out from behind coffee-coloured, shining-edged clouds, blasting the street with harsh, dazzling light, then shutting down, deadening the puddles and car bonnets. With the envelope in her sleeve, Tirzah makes for the mountain lane and doesn’t stop. Her shoes are heavy with moisture and keep making farting noises as they flex. On and on she runs, gasping, flanked by drying foxglove spears that rattle in the gusts of wind, past the old yew tree that used to be her friend. When she reaches the derelict pub she slows down, clambers through the tall ferns to the low forestry wall and leans against it. From here she can look up to the familiar, gently curving summit. In amongst its carpet of whinberry bushes and stunted hawthorns, the eternal s
heep chew. Now and then, one will bleat and another answer. Tirzah wonders what they are saying to each other. What could sheep possibly have to say that they had not already said, here on the mountain?

  The stones of the wall are patterned with discs of rough, sulphur-hued lichen. The purple-flowered creeping plants she loves sprout from the dry cracks. Above the mountain’s sage-green breast, a sparrowhawk is making its sharp and hungry call as it twirls in the wind-bothered sky. Tirzah begins to relax, her body unkinking as she breathes the wild air. Even though she is warm from her walk, deep inside she feels icy somehow. She climbs over the wall, slips under the arms of the pine trees and is instantly anointed with resin and old, warm, woody smells. The sounds of the mountain are muffled, and when she has gone no more than ten paces they fall silent. The only sound is the perpetual sighing of the treetops. Tirzah knows how to find the gnarled tree stump she and Osian always lay in. Soon she is there and squeezes into a narrow opening between two exposed roots. This tree must be ancient, she thinks; it had lived and died before the forestry was even planted. Now it is my shelter. In amongst the dusty roots, Tirzah’s damp yellow dress gleams. She stretches out her bare legs and kicks off her soaked shoes. Finally, she is ready to open the letter from Osian.

  At first she doesn’t understand. Why would he be talking about the Christian Youth Circle’s trip now? All that is ancient history, surely? No one is going to allow Tirzah to go anyway. As soon as her pregnancy is officially known, she will have a job to get someone to stand next to her at the bus stop, let alone allow a child of theirs to go on holiday with her. She throws the letter down. Has Osian gone soft in the head? After a few moments she picks the letter back up. Osian is saying that if they were to go on the weekend away, they could talk properly. He doesn’t mention her pregnancy, she notices, but maybe he doesn’t like to. Her chilly heart is suddenly warm. He writes that he has something important to say. Tirzah is unsure what he could mean, but she is so happy Osian wants to see her that she laughs out loud in the silent wood. The way they have been with each other – the way he has been since the horrible sheet incident – maybe they can sort it out.

  Tirzah stands and brushes herself down. She will go to Biddy’s and write a reply to Osian, inviting him to meet up so they can talk about it. Now she has something to do she feels entirely different. Yes, it will be tricky getting permission to go away, but she and her mother have the saved money tucked by. Not to mention Derry’s ten pounds. And between them they can handle Dada. She falters for a moment. Poor Dada. He has had some nasty shocks recently. She remembers the unfamiliar way his eyes look these days: it’s as if someone had taken a threaded needle and tacked the skin around them, then pulled. She walks on, shaking her hair out of her eyes and deliberately turning her thoughts away. Thank goodness Mr Humphries the CYC deacon is nice, not so deacony as the others. He likes them both, she can tell. He will be on their side. Anyway, some things are much easier than you imagine they will be. She knows that now. On the other hand, of course, some things are much harder. She slows her pace. Already she is approaching the village.

  I Will Clothe Thee with Change of Raiment

  (Zechariah 3:4)

  A tiny click from the bedroom door wakes Tirzah. Swinging her legs on to the carpet, she sees a brown envelope propped up on the side table and realises this must be her exam results. It’s odd, she thinks, reading the typewritten address. Usually the only things she gets in the post are birthday cards, and here is her second letter in a week. After holding it in her lap for a while, she opens it, dry-eyed and calm, and reads the long row of A’s. Then she stuffs the letter and envelope under her mattress and gets ready to go out. Tirzah’s mother has decided they will visit the city to buy maternity clothes. On the way to the train station, Tirzah contemplates taking off, running away, showing a neat pair of heels, but she feels too burdened to run these days. It’s hard to believe she was, not long ago, the girl who could sprint all the way to the summit of the mountain without stopping. In the train she looks at the dirty window, pretending to enjoy the view, but imprinted on her burning eyes is the neat row of A’s on their sheet of white paper. Even when she closes her eyelids, the list is there, irrelevant to her now as a dead language on a stone tablet.

  She ignores her mother’s suggestion they move to the shaded side of the carriage. Why did we have to come all the way down here to go shopping? Tirzah asks, as they wait to get off. Having sat in full sunshine, her head is now so hot her hair seems to be coiling tightly away from her scalp all by itself. Her mother gives her a squinty look. Well, I’m only asking, Tirzah says, lifting the collar of her dress and flapping it. It just seems a bit over the top to me. The only other time she’s been to the city was on a bus trip with her grandparents and Biddy to see the Christmas panto. She remembers the blood-red velvet theatre and the heart-stopping glow that seemed to surround the baddie every time he appeared. It was dull whenever he was offstage. She realises her mother is standing on the platform with her eyes looking skywards, lips moving as she counts up to ten. Tirzah waits, thinking how in the frosted, twinkly dark of Christmas the city seemed like the panto’s backdrop. Now the city is too noisy and full of rushing people. Boy’s bach! her mother exclaims, grabbing her arm and shaking it. You, madam, are a naughty girl. Ungrateful and cheeky. Tirzah tries not to squirm. If you were a year or two younger I would cheerfully give you a smacked bottom. Do you want to get straight back on the train? For a start, no one knows us here, so I can be less ashamed. Her bottom lip is doing a little jiggle and her eyes are brimming. She is hurting Tirzah. Ouch, Mammy, Tirzah says, fighting the urge to snatch her arm away. I’m sorry. I am naughty and don’t deserve to have anything or go anywhere. Her mother manages a smile, loosening her grip. Let’s forget about this small upset, she says, tucking her arm through Tirzah’s. She takes a deep breath. I thought we could have a gander at the castle if we’ve got time later.

  Tirzah trails along, trying not to hate the sight of her mother’s neat behind jostling under her floral skirt. Honestly, she thinks, I would be quite content to wear a sack if I could get away with it. In a department store they buy two maternity smocks, bras and some big pants. Her mother had to manhandle her into the dresses and jerk her into the bras. Shape up, child, she’d said, panting. I know you don’t want maternity clothes, but you’ll need them soon enough, believe me. Tirzah looked at herself in the mirror with one of the dresses flapping around her, and teetered between crying and laughing. It was airless and uncomfortable in the cubicle with her mother prodding her from all angles. Yes, Mama, she’d said, pulling the dress off without waiting for her mother to undo her. Let’s get out of here, quick. By the time they stop for a bite to eat, Tirzah is wispy with heat and the buffetings from crowded pavements. Come on, her mother says finally, let’s have a meal in the market. Tirzah follows her mother to a stall with a few tables on a wooden platform. You guard our places, her mother says, putting her bags on the table. I will go and order. Tirzah sits carefully on a rickety chair. It’s funny, but while most of her is ready to evaporate, her feet and hands are so heavy they weigh her down. The smell of fish and spoiling vegetables from the surrounding stalls forces itself into her throat. She starts dreaming of a glass of clear water clinking with ice cubes.

  I ordered us faggots and peas, her mother says, appearing with cutlery. I know you like them. Tirzah tries to smile. Lovely, Mam, she says. The idea of gravy flooded with claggy pea water is daunting. She could maybe nibble a small sandwich without crusts. But when the faggots come, their rich, brown smell suddenly makes her hungry. Tirzah drinks her warm juice while her mother says a prayer. People are staring over at them, she can see. Amen. Now let’s eat up, her mother says, showering her own bowl with vinegar. When Tirzah puts a tiny blob of faggot in her mouth she is relieved to find it delicious. There you are, her mother goes on, pepper in hand. What you need is a nice dinner inside you. They both eat every scrap, even the bread that comes as part of the meal. Now I’d lov
e an ice cream, Tirzah says with her hands on her belly, leaning back. All through the meal, neither of them mentions the brown envelope, and Tirzah is glad.

  After they have eaten a bowl of ice cream and her mother has paid, they find the toilets. Around the walls, brass pipework shines. The air is laden with bleach. Squares of carefully ripped cardboard for walking on dot the damp floor. That’s what I like, Tirzah’s mother says, tidying her hair at the mirror over the single sink, a nice, clean lav. She licks her two middle fingertips and shapes her eyebrows into arches. Tirzah remembers her mother’s idea about visiting the castle and decides to say she is too tired. Mam, she whispers, leaning against the toilet door, I want to go home now. Poor little dwt, her mother murmurs, stroking Tirzah’s cheek. So you shall. When they’ve spruced themselves up, they walk slowly back to the station. Do you mind about the castle, Mam? Tirzah asks, feeling a pang of guilt. The castle has been there for hundreds of years, her mother answers, it can wait a bit longer. Soon they are on the train, and this time it is quiet and cool. Have a little snooze, her mother says. Lie down and rest your head in my lap.