Outside, the rain slaps the concrete and pings off the windows. Tirzah puts a brothy piece of bread in her mouth and thinks about the chickens. They will all be huddled in the dry now, like sensible birds. The purple mint leaves clustering the pathways will bob stiffly with the weight of water. She is happy to be safe with her mother in such a storm. She remembers the talking crow in her dream, and her own strange replies, but already cannot recall what they had said to each other. She must think hard; surely the crow was telling her something important. She wants it to be about Osian. Everything all right, cariad? her mother is asking. She searches Tirzah’s face with a yearning look. You’re not eating your cawl. I made it specially for you. Tirzah looks down into her bowl. It’s lovely, Mama, she manages to say. I’m just having a breather. Now her tongue is coated with lamb fat and she is worrying at a scrap of gristle that won’t yield to her teeth. She squints around to check the dim corners of the room, fearful she can detect a kerfuffle of flapping wings.
Take Knowledge of All the Lurking Places Where He Hideth
(1 Samuel 23:23)
A couple of weeks into the new term, Tirzah wakes early and at last allows herself to peer through the gap in her curtains. Biddy appears, running down the street, school coat half-trailing, bag brimming with new books. Ffion is waiting for her to catch up. Tirzah watches, craning her neck, as they walk out of sight, talking and laughing. Soon all the children are gone and the street is empty again. Summer is over. Already, swags of rain-washed blackberries shine like jet brooches in the hedges. There is a smell of ripening apples and drying grass, warm and sharp, lying over the hazy valley. The cream meadowsweet that brimmed frothily along the edges of the road to her grandparents’ is now spoilt. Chilly little breezes rush down from the mountain, bringing with them the smoky perfume of bracken. For Tirzah, it is as if the world has rolled on, huge and indifferent. What do I matter? she thinks, getting back into bed and putting an arm over her eyes. The bedclothes are tight across her belly. Why should anything slow down and wait for me? It’s calming, this idea of being small as a stone in a forgotten gully. Nothing matters really, she thinks drowsily.
Later, when she wakes again, she still has the cold, desolate feeling around her shoulders that seeing Biddy gave her. The things in her room don’t apply to her any more. She can’t run in her gym shoes. Her excellent O-level results are not important. But still, I am me, not some stone in a ditch. And I matter to myself, she reflects. I always will. The difference now is that the thought brings no comfort. Caring is a burden; if you don’t care, then of course nothing matters. You need never be sad or lonely or worried. She lies still, even though she needs to use the toilet, and sends her mind to the top of the mountain, above the forestry, way above the woods, and searches for that glowing, joyful presence she once ran towards. Was that real? It’s as if the encounter on the mountain top on the day of the outreach meeting happened to someone else. But the more she thinks about it now, the more convinced she becomes that she was the girl who raised her arms and embraced such golden, unknown glory. Getting up, she sits on the toilet and enjoys the sound of urine splashing into the pan. Her heart expands, and the memory of that day revisits her as she puts her clothes on, lingering like the aftertaste of something delicious in her mouth.
The house is empty, her breakfast laid out as usual, iron tablets by the side of her plate. On the dresser is her mother’s knitting basket, and inside, skewered with thin wooden needles, is a lacy, nearly finished white baby jacket. Tirzah pulls the knitting out and carefully lays it in an airy pile on the table. Here are the tiny, unattached sleeves, here is the back, not much bigger than her hand, and the two front panels, all waiting to be connected. Tirzah cannot believe that her baby will be born in the new year. Surely this jacket would only fit a doll. She stuffs the garment back in the basket and thinks about breakfast instead. Eating cornflakes, she recalls the crow-dream she had during the storm and decides on a plan: she will try to find out what’s happened to Osian. That’s not an impossible task. Then, with a small, uncomfortable thrill that straightens her back, she is forced to admit that her dream had been about Brân, not Osian at all, no matter how much she’s been worrying about him. She’d known all along, but had deliberately ignored the truth. Brân is the one who is the Prince of Crows. Or so he always said. She remembers how he’d cringed from the birds the last time she had seen him in the woods. Some prince he turned out to be, she thinks, swilling her bowl and cup.
Tirzah walks up the quiet street with her mother’s shopping bag. When she gets to the Co-op, she sits on the wall for a moment, remembering Brân’s little boys scrabbling for sweeties all those months ago. She will find one of the boys and talk to him. But it’s term time now, and everyone’s at school. In the shop she stands in line at the bacon counter and watches Mrs Ellis-Jones come from the storeroom to help. When she sees Tirzah, she mutters something to the other shop assistant. Well? she says through thin lips when it’s Tirzah’s turn. What do you want? Tirzah hands over her mother’s note and looks unblinkingly over the pre-packed bricks of cheese. Mrs Ellis-Jones goes a deep, painful colour and scans the list. Some people have no shame, she says, averting her eyes and clumsily trying to nip a pile of bacon from the tray in the chiller with her metal tongs. Not that bacon, thank you, Tirzah says. My mother would like fresh-cut. She waits while Mrs Ellis-Jones cuts her eight new slices. When she pays, the woman makes a big show of not touching her hand. Tirzah remembers how Mrs Ellis-Jones had told her to change her melting lollies for icy ones early in the summer. Swap those, lovey, she’d said, winking. You’d have to pour ’em out by the time you got home. Tirzah glances at Mrs Ellis-Jones’s stony face. Thank you, she says again. Goodbye now. The bag isn’t heavy, but her legs tremble as she opens the door. The clang of the bell makes her armpits tingle.
There is a ball being kicked against a wall, and Tirzah traces the sound to the alley down the side of the Co-op. She drops her bag and straightens, hands pressed to the small of her back. One of Brân’s boys is half-heartedly dribbling the ball about. Hiya, she says, stepping near him. The boy stops, his foot on the ball, and gives her a blank-eyed stare. Aren’t you a butty of Brân’s? she asks. He busies himself with stuffing his T-shirt into his shorts. Do you remember me? she goes on, and the boy gives a nod. Now he is closer, she is sure he was the one Brân baptised in the stream. Didn’t I see you with Brân down by the stream in the woods that day? He picks up the ball. Nuh, he says, I gotta be off, and tries to push past. My mam is waiting. You’re mooching off school, so I don’t think that’s true, Tirzah says, holding his arm lightly. I just want to know how Brân is. Do you see him now? The boy shakes her hand off and runs out of the alley. Get lost! he shouts back, and spits in her direction. None of us goes to those stupid woods no more. He boots his ball ahead of him up the street and runs after it.
Tirzah re-enters the shop and buys a few more items, then walks home as quickly as she can. In her room she wraps the things she bought – a pork pie, some Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut chocolate and four apples – in an old tablecloth. Her hands are shaking, and the apples keep escaping. Then she remembers Derry’s money, and from the tin in the back of her wardrobe takes out the remaining notes, pushing them into the chocolate wrapper with just their ends showing. All the time she’s been busy, she’s kept her mind blank. Now she sits on the floor next to the food and silently weeps for Brân. How must he be managing, abandoned by his boys? She pictures him, tattered and filthy, stumbling around in the ferns, his broken-down shoes falling off. A picture of him snaffling the cheese and onion pasty she gave him outside the Co-op comes to her, and she gulps as she remembers how he had licked the oily wrapping when he thought no one was looking. Down in the pantry she grabs some Oxo cubes. When she opens her mother’s Quality Street tin, a homely waft of fruit and spice catches in her nostrils, and she takes out the nub of bara brith. Lastly, under the stairs she finds a shrunken jumper of her father’s. Then the parcel is complete, and retur
ning to her room, she ties the cloth’s four corners together round the provisions to make a lumpy bundle.
Her mother’s Yoo hoo! reaches up the stairs and Tirzah makes her way to the kitchen. There’s one good thing about being denounced, her mother says from the pantry, a person has a lot more time to do things. Tirzah stands in the doorway, hoping she won’t look in the cake tin. I’ve just been to see your granny and bamps, she goes on. They would love to see you. Tirzah has the bundle behind her back. I’ll pop up soon, she says, hovering. You look like frightened Ike, all pale and staring, child, her mother observes, distracted by a bluebottle. Whatever’s the matter? Then she starts flapping with a duster. Buzz off! she shouts. Dirty creature! Tirzah backs out of the kitchen, leaving the house by the front door, and walks away from the village. At the long stone wall enclosing the first of the fields she is halted for a moment, but soon finds the gate and pushes through. The stubbly fields stretch on and on, and Tirzah begins to feel like a tiny speck on the surface of the world, scarcely visible, inching along, liable to be crushed at any moment. She has forgotten to eat and is light-headed, but nothing matters to her more than getting this parcel to Brân. When she’s done that, she can think about something else.
The sheep ignore her as she walks past them across the grass. In a daze, she struggles to climb the walls, scraping her shins, but doesn’t stop. Without warning, the woods rear up, and bending to enter under the low branches and arching brambles, she trips and slides down the bluebell bank, coming to rest not far from the stream and Brân’s first den. Invisible birds agitate the canopy, and old man’s beard is lying like garlands of soap suds over the undergrowth. She balances carefully on two large stones in the stream and crosses, dodging the nettles. On the bare earth, the scorch marks from Brân’s long-dead fire can be seen. Tirzah clears her throat, preparing to call out, but the thought of tearing the greenish, listening air trapped under the trees feels wrong. She sits on the edge of the trampled earth and hears the stream singing incessantly to itself. Suddenly she is thirsty, and leaving the bundle out in the open, she makes for the water, but the stinging nettles throng more luxuriantly where the water is easiest to scoop up.
She looks back at the bundle. From a distance, the checked tablecloth looks so out of place, and its contents are so inadequate, she wonders if Brân will even see it, and if he did, would he want it? She decides to call a few times, just in case he is near, and then make a run for home. Cupping her hands, she lets out a cry that seems to die as it leaves her lips. She tries again, but it’s as if the trees hungrily snatch the sound from her. There is nothing for it but to leave. Making her way laboriously back up the long bank, she thinks she can detect a leafy kind of commotion happening behind her, as if the undergrowth were being thrashed aside by someone striking out with a stick. Once upon a time, she would have imagined the Devil was after her. Now, using the very last shreds of her energy, she rushes, bent double, up and out into the daylight.
Know and Consider What Thou Wilt Do
(1 Samuel 25:17)
From her bed, Tirzah can hear a visitor arrive. A familiar male voice is raised in answer to her father’s greeting. She sits up and listens, frowning, as the voices recede down the hall. So, it’s the front room for them. She lies against the pillows, the muscles of her lower back radiating a dull ache. Since her secret visit to the woods, she has not been feeling right. Mrs Betty Palfrey has been coming to do blood pressure readings and urine tests. Tirzah is bed-bound for a week, even though, for the past four days, all her results are healthy. She has tried to reread some favourite childhood books, but boredom floors her every time, and she lets each book slip from her fingers, incapable of holding on to her thoughts for more than a page or two. She is eaten up by how this baby is preventing her from doing what she has to do. It’s difficult to be calm, with her mind so full of things. Everyone is telling her to relax. We don’t want to be carted off to the hospital at this stage, do we? asks Mrs Palfrey, squeezing her little black bladder of air in her fist on one of these daily blood pressure check-ups. No, we don’t, Mrs P, Tirzah says, trying to take unhurried breaths.
Now the voice downstairs is bothering her, and she closes her eyes, the better to listen. Of course, it’s Pastor, she says to her room, conjuring up his narrow, indoor-pale face and winking steel-rimmed glasses. Why is Pastor calling all these weeks after the whole family have been thrown out of chapel? Except for Biddy, who is overjoyed about not going to services, they have been the strangest, saddest weeks she can ever remember. Her father spends all his spare time out in the garden, smashing up concrete with a pickaxe. The reverberating, muffled thump, thump, thump is almost normal now. Tirzah and her mother watch him through the kitchen window. He raises the swinging pickaxe, his body bending backward at an unlikely angle. Then he sends it crashing down. There’s something too extreme about the effort he is putting in. It reminds Tirzah of the time, years ago, when she and her mother watched him scythe their lovely garden flat. Now he’s on the rampage again, to restore it. Everything seems wrong in the house. Without the meetings to hang their days on, time has no proper shape. There are holes appearing, and they try to fill them in their own ways.
When Tirzah and her mother bump into members of Horeb around the village, it’s all glances and blushes, hemming and hawing, or righteous stares and the twitching of garment hems. Though, as her mother says, to be fair, this is not true of everybody. But there was one day when her mother came in from grocery shopping and sat in the kitchen like a bag of old charity clothes. What’s happened? Tirzah asked, kneeling to hold her balled-up hands. I believe Pastor’s wife just shook my dust off her robe, so to speak, her mother mumbled, voice distorted by tears. Tirzah looked puzzled. Well, her mother had said, warming up, what I mean is, the very fact I stood near her in the butcher’s might have contaminated her, and she brushed me off like this. And she re-enacted someone flicking something nasty off themselves. Oh, she did, did she? Tirzah had said, her temperature rising. I would like to do a bit of shaking myself. But her mother had chided her, and asked her to think what Jesus would have done. Tirzah was silent. Anyway, I’m happy that I was sick on her best shoes, she’d said at last, remembering Pastor’s wife’s black patent affairs all splatted. So am I, her mother answered, reviving enough to attend to her flattened, unpinned bun. May the Lord forgive me.
Now Tirzah sits and waits for what will happen next downstairs. I always seem to be skulking on the landing, and I’m fed up with it, she thinks, glad about her meeting with Derry tomorrow. At least that’s something different to look forward to. She wonders again why he said it was important they meet, but is distracted by her mother bustling out of the front room to the kitchen. The conversation escaping through the open door is lively. When the tea is made, her mother takes a tray in and shuts the door again. Tirzah sits on in the dimness. If the weekdays have felt strange, then Sundays have been so long and empty, with her father locked away in his study. The sound of her mother singing from the hymnal while she has a meeting on her own in the front room sends Tirzah into a black mood that only sleep can save her from. She can’t pray these days and doesn’t even care, she realises now. As always, she wonders how this has happened. If it wasn’t for all her worries, she would be as happy as Biddy never to go to chapel again.
Wrapping the dressing gown around her bump, she thinks about Biddy’s last visit. It’s all Ffion this, Ffion that and Ffion the other with her now. When Tirzah gazed at Biddy from her bed, trying to look interested in a story about some sixth form boys, she thought her face would freeze and fall off in one piece. I’m relieved when she leaves, she thinks. There is always a brief, airless gap when Tirzah is solitary again and she can examine her loneliness. It’s as if she and Biddy are on opposite banks of a river, each walking along in the same direction but unable to hear each other over the sound of the water. She would dearly love to know what Biddy is studying for A-level, but will not ask. She jumps a little on the step when the front-room
door opens, sending a block of light into the hallway. Pastor is shaking hands with her parents before he leaves. She waits for the sound of the door closing, then goes down to them. Her mother’s eyes are red, and her father’s grim expression has something else bubbling behind it she can’t read.
Come into the front room, he says. We have good tidings of great joy. Tirzah sits beside her mother on the hard sofa and holds her hand. Let us pray, her father says, as if he were a deacon again. Tirzah looks at her mother questioningly and gets a wet-eyed nod back. The prayer rambles on until her mother coughs. Tirzah gathers that they are all welcomed back into the fold. Her father has thanked the Lord for softening the hard, judgemental hearts of the brethren and sisters, and convicting them of their erroneous ways. Amen, Lord, he ends sonorously. So be it, and amen. Tirzah and her mother echo him in whispers. Then he leaps to his feet, and grasping his hands around the hilt of an imaginary sword, makes swishing movements above their heads. I beseeched that the Lord would take His righteous sword in hand and slay them all, he shouts, eyes shining, and my prayer was answered. Calm down now, Gwyll, her mother says, ducking and looking uneasy. The fellowship is all over the place, and that’s nothing to be triumphant about in my book.
Tirzah starts to ask questions, but her father will not be rushed. Of course, I knew it was only a matter of time before they begged me to come back, he goes on, settling into his chair. Didn’t I say so, Mair? No, you did not, Gwyllim, she answers. And that’s God’s honest truth. She turns to Tirzah. The fellowship has split into two, she explains. Pastor and some of the fellowship want us back, and Osian’s father and his faction don’t, so they’ve left. She starts to cry, fumbling for her hankie. I have never felt so guilty in my life. Hooray, thinks Tirzah. Good riddance to them. Well, Mam, she says, you must admit, some of them were very nasty to us. Her mother is crying into her hankie. We will be in Horeb, the house of the Lord, and apparently they will meet in the room above the surgery, her father tells her. And that zealot will lead the poor articles. See how they like that. He’s rubbing his hands and smiling broadly. I don’t know why you’re snivelling, Mair, he adds. This is a victory. But her mother shakes her head, covering her mouth. Tirzah sits silently. If Mama feels guilty and she hasn’t actually done anything wrong, then how much more should I feel, she thinks, patting her mother’s shoulder. Everyone to bed, her father announces. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, I think.
Tirzah and the Prince of Crows Page 27
