by Dai Smith
‘Thin is her broth and heavy her jam pudding,’ Emlyn muttered. ‘No hand has she for tasty cooking.’
‘Give the woman time,’ Jacob answered with warmth. ‘More used to cows’ teats her hands have been, remember.’
At first, too, she seemed to dislike being present in the kitchen when the men bathed, to hand them this and that as they stood naked in the tub, and to wash the coal-black off their backs, as the women do in the miners’ cottages. But gradually she got accustomed to it, even to washing Emlyn’s back, while Jacob, having taken precedence in the tub, read the paper or dozed before the fire, attired only in his flannel shirt. For such is the bucolic simplicity of the miner’s cottage life; and Rebecca did not mind, presently.
Though she dreamed of a better life. True, this valley was far nicer than the country of Cardiganshire. Here there were shops filled with blue and red silks and satins, fashionable hats, beads, and thin delicate shoes. Here was a cinema too. The chapel was crowded with observant faces, and she had a position there, as the wife of a deacon. Yet she craved for something else, she knew, gazing at her handsome face in the mirror, that some other wonderful thing was escaping her. And as she realised that, a strained and baffled look would come into her searching eyes and she would cross her pressing arms over her body, a half-strangled moan escaping her distended lips.
There were some evenings when she was left alone, Jacob in the chapel attending to deacons’ business; and Emlyn was always out. She had not made friends yet, and in those long weary evenings she would sit and brood over a novelette, her face a little paler after the work of the day. Or she would go into the parlour and lie down on the sofa in the darkness, or stand at the window and watch with gleaming eyes the few people pass. And then perhaps she would go out for a short walk, to the main street, where the men were gathered in little groups about the street corners, peaceful in the night, the hills rising up tall and secretive, each side of the hushed vale. But she would return with a greater loneliness in her heart.
Jacob would come in to his supper and sink with established familiarity into his chair, his face fixed in a contented leer.
‘Well, Rebecca,’ he would say, watching every movement she made, every expression shifting on her face, ‘what have you been doing tonight?’
He never touched or caressed her out of bed. But his pale eyes watched her with a possessive satisfaction that crept about her like the tight embrace of a snake. Sometimes she would notice his large oaken hand tremble as it rested on his knee.
Then she would go into the kitchen and wait until the painful throbbing of her heart was stilled.
And he was aware of that, her sheering off from him like a flame from an icy blast. A strange lipless grin would come to his face then. Still the female was not his. The contented leer passed from his face and in his eyes a fanatical glare shone. As it shone when he prayed aloud in chapel.
III
One Sunday morning she said:
‘Staying home from chapel I am this morning.’
Her face was rather yellow, though her cheeks as yet had not quite lost their blooming rose.
‘Not well you are?’ Jacob enquired gently.
‘I will make apple dumplings instead,’ she promised, moving away into the kitchen.
‘Don’t you stay too long over the fire,’ he said, looking for his Bible and bag of peppermints. And he went out dressed in his deep Sunday black.
She was alone. Emlyn had gone to the whippet-racing, the Sunday morning amusement of those colliers who have the courage to scorn the chapel respectability; but she wished he was home, so that she would have someone young to talk with. That morning the house had seemed like a dark and silent prison about her soul, and yet she would not have stirred out of it, fearful lest she would cry aloud in the chapel. She worked, going from room to room with a duster, working without method, only conscious that she must move. She prepared the apple dumplings. A little later Emlyn came in. He brought with him a dog, one of the whippets.
‘It isn’t yours?’ she asked, gazing fixedly at the slim animal. It had a beautiful sleek body, long and narrow, its glistening fawn coat like velvet, the most delicate-looking dog she had ever seen. ‘Ah,’ she cried in sudden excitement, ‘lovely he is.’
‘Keeping him I am for a while,’ Emlyn said, taking the dog’s head in his hand with a slow pressure that she watched, bending to stroke the animal. There was a bright glint, almost of passion, in Emlyn’s eyes as he held the dog’s head tight in his hand.
‘Oh, he doesn’t like me!’ she cried childishly as, her hand touching his sleek coat, the dog winced away. Shaking his head free, the whippet looked at her with a swift regard. Then, sniffing the air delicately, he moved his head towards her, his long narrow head that invited the grasp of a hand. And, fearful but fascinated, her hand moved down over the head until it spanned the jaw in a light and trembling clasp.
‘There!’ Emlyn said in a satisfied voice, ‘he likes you.’
Slowly she released the head. The dog turned to Emlyn with a nervous look, as though he wondered at some atmosphere in the air.
‘My little beauty!’ Emlyn cried suddenly in delight. ‘Just like a funny little child you are.’
Rebecca got up slowly, stood watching them, her eyelids dropped, her face inscrutable. Emlyn was as though unaware of her and was caressing the dog, uttering little noises of satisfaction. He passed his large strong hands over the slender body of the dog, slowly up and down, the thumbs on the back and the fingers over the belly.
‘Soft and glossy as the back of a swan,’ he whispered ecstatically.
The dog was quivering under his grasp.
‘Hurting him you are!’ she exclaimed.
‘No,’ he said, ‘he likes it.’ And his powerful collier’s hands, that spanned the animal’s slim body, were certain and intimate in their caressive grasp.
Then when Emlyn released him, the dog immediately lay down on the mat, contentedly burying his head between his paws. Emlyn looked up.
Rebecca was still standing against the table, taut, her eyelids drooped. There seemed a strange tension on her face. Neither spoke for a minute or so and at last her voice, unquiet and unwilling, broke the silence:
‘What will Jacob say, bringing one of those dogs in on a Sunday?’ Jacob, as was proper in a deacon, sternly condemned whippet racing.
‘Ah! what will he say?’ Emlyn repeated, a little grin on his mouth.
And then he stared at her, his full moist lips distended in that jeering grin. For a moment she looked back at him. Her eyes seemed to go naked in that moment, their blue nudity, chastened of weariness and pain, gleaming full on him.
She moved away, went into the kitchen and sank upon a chair. The yellow pallor of her face was again evident. She looked as though she wanted to be sick.
Jacob came in, his face still exalted from the chapel prayers. Immediately he saw the sleeping dog.
‘Whose is that?’ he asked sternly.
‘Keeping it for a while I am,’ Emlyn said fondly. ‘A little angel he is.’
‘Bah!’ Jacob uttered, violent wrath beginning to burn in his shrunken cheeks. ‘Bring you one of those animals in this house? Come I have from the Big Seat of the chapel, the words of our prayers still full of fire in my heart, and this vessel of wickedness my eyes see as I enter my house!’
‘Ach, Jacob, if wickedness there is, blame you the men that use the animal.’
‘He is a partner in your Sabbath abominations. Take him away from here.’ A storm was gathering in Jacob’s eyes.
‘He likes the warmth of the fire. Look, Jacob, innocent as a little calf’s is his face.’ The dog had lifted its head and was gazing at Jacob with a pleading expression in his glinting eyes. But his gaze made Jacob more infuriated.
‘Out of these rooms where I move,’ he began to shout. ‘Take him back to his owner or tie him to the tree in the garden. Put evil in the house he does.’
Rebecca had come into the room. She s
aid, her voice scarcely above a mutter: ‘Comfort let the little dog bach have, Jacob. Delicate he looks and company for me he’ll be.’
Jacob turned to her. ‘Ignorant of the wicked sports he is partner to you are, Mrs Jenkins,’ he replied angrily. ‘No, let him go out of this house.’
Emlyn began to grin. He was really indifferent. The grin on his handsome tolerant face was irritating to Jacob, who began to moan:
‘Ach, awful it is for me to have a brother who spends the Sabbath mingling with abandoned and dirty-minded men. Take you warning, young man, the Lord is not mocked and derided long.’
‘All sorts come to our races,’ Emlyn reflected comfortably, ‘and happy and healthy they seem. No sour faces such as gather in the chapels.’ He called to the dog and lazily took him to the garden.
IV
That night she dreamed of hands.
They were upon her breasts, outspread and clasping; and there was such a pain beneath them that her lips moved in anguish. She did not know whose hands they were, her mind strove to discover. A horror came upon her, she seemed to struggle. But the hands were immovable and finally she submitted, drifting into the gloom and the horror, moaning until she woke in the darkness, hearing the bell of the alarm clock.
‘Jacob,’ she called, louder than usual, ‘Jacob.’
Jacob grunted. He had been deep in slumber. Rebecca got out of bed and lit the candle. Then Jacob, his face grey and corpse-like in the dim light, moving his limbs with the effort of an old man, followed and put on, with grunts and sighs, his thick striped flannel drawers.
She went downstairs, after calling Emlyn. Her mind was still drugged with slumber and in her too was the shadow of that unbearable pain. With mechanical drugged movements she set about the usual tasks – blew the fire into a glow and set the kettle, prepared the breakfast and the men’s food tins for the pit. She was in such abstraction that when she turned and saw Emlyn, who had silently entered in his stockinged feet, she shrank back with a little cry.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ he exclaimed.
For a moment or two she stared at him. His face! Ah, she had never seen it before, not as she saw it now. Her heart seemed to dart in a flame to her throat, her lips could utter no word. And there he stood, strange and watching, looking at her curiously.
Then she woke with a jolt and bent her head, to cut the bread.
‘Make a noise coming down you ought to,’ she said. ‘Not quite awake am I, early in the morning like this.’
Emlyn began to whistle with a shrill male energy that made her shudder, and went into the kitchen for his boots.
Jacob came down, coughing. He seemed to creak as he sat in his chair, his face like a wrinkled stone.
They all sat down to breakfast, Rebecca between them. There was cold ham and thick black tea. Jacob began to grunt:
‘Wheezy I am again this morning. Glad I’ll be when I’ll be able to lie in bed longer.’
Rebecca was looking at her husband. As he uttered the last word he glanced at her and a cunning grin came over his face. She felt her stomach rise, her mind reel.
‘Jesus, white you’ve gone, Rebecca,’ Emlyn said quickly.
Jacob looked at her calmly. The cunning grin had become an obscene and triumphant leer.
‘Well, well, one must expect such things now,’ he said.
‘What!’ exclaimed Emlyn in a sharpened voice. ‘True is it, Rebecca?’
She suddenly swept her hand before her, upsetting her cup of tea.
‘No,’ she said loudly, ‘no.’
‘Ach, you don’t know,’ said Jacob. ‘And there’s a mess you’ve made, Mrs Jenkins.’
‘No, it’s not true,’ she repeated loudly. Her eyes glittered.
Jacob sniffed as he rose from the table and loosened his belt.
‘See we shall,’ he continued hatefully, sniffing laughter over the words. ‘Think you are different to other women?’
She sat, her face stretched forward like an animal suddenly aware of some ominous portent. The men gathered their things together.
‘Take you heart, Mrs Jenkins,’ Jacob said.
She watched them go off – they worked side by side in the pit, on the same seam. Her husband’s back suddenly roused a fury of hate in her – she could have clawed in venom the coarse thick neck above the cotton muffler. But Emlyn – going through the door last – turned and smiled at her, a quick brilliant smile that rippled in a delighted shudder over her, until her own moist mouth reflected it.
She removed the breakfast things. How quiet and familiar the house had become! She thought of the day’s work in a sudden access of energy; and she began to sing Merch yr Ydfa. The rows of polished plates standing on the dresser pleased her – how pretty were the little Chinese bridges and the sleeping trees! She plunged her hands into a bowl of cold water and enjoyed the shudder that ran through her blood.
Then the bark of a dog made her lift her head quickly. She went in haste to the pantry and filled a pan with pieces of bread, pouring milk over. Again came the bark, and she hurried out with the pan to the back garden.
The whippet stood outside its roughly made kennel.
‘Well, well now,’ she called soothingly, ‘is he hungry then?’
She knelt on the earth before it, holding the pan for it to eat; and as the animal ate she admired again the fawn sheen of his coat and the long delicate shape of his body, which quivered in pleasure.
V
Then from that morning Rebecca seemed to awaken as from a long and dull slumber. Her eyes became wider, a blue and virgin fire glowing beneath the thick lids; and as she went about, her body walked with a taut and proud grace, flaunting a fierce health. Her voice became plangent and direct, coming from her heavy lips.
‘Ha, agree with you does married life,’ Jacob said.
She slowly turned her head to him.
‘Ha,’ he repeated, ‘rich and nice as a little calf you are now.’ And he added with lecherous humour, ‘Afraid of you I was at first, in Cardigan. More like a Bristol cow you were then.’
She pressed her hands down over her hips, lifting her shoulders and looking at him with drawn brows.
‘Not angry with me you are?’ he asked with childish complaint. ‘A compliment I was paying you.’
She said, a metallic sharpness wavering in her voice: ‘Don’t you watch me so much. Continually your eyes are watching me.’
Curiously, he dropped his head before her anger. For the first time she realised her power.
‘Like a prison keeper you behave,’ she added. ‘Always you are staring at me as if I wanted to hide something from you. Suspicious of me you are?’
His instinct was aroused by her question.
‘Something to hide you have, then?’ he asked, jerking his head up.
‘What can there be to hide!’ she exclaimed with such artless surprise that again his face became expressive of his relentless lust for her.
‘Only a thought passing in my head it was,’ he muttered.
She roused herself. She seemed to glitter with an ominous vitality, female and righteous.
‘A dirty old swine you are,’ she said loudly.
He received this with silence. Then his voice became plaintive and ashamed; he said:
‘Harsh you are with me, Rebecca. Forgive an old man’s errors you must.’
He looked at her with abject pleading in his eyes. She stared back at him. And still she saw behind the flickering childish pleading in his eyes the obsessed leer of the old man, the relentless icy glitter of his lust. She drew back and her voice had something of a threat in it as she said:
‘Well, don’t you be so suspicious of me at all.’
She went upstairs to their bedroom.
The evening sun invaded the room with a warm and languid light, a shaft falling on the scarlet counterpane of the bed. The soft glow soothed her. She gazed in the mirror and, biting her lower lip, softly murmured his name. ‘Emlyn, Emlyn.’ Her head dropped, she sank on
the bed and covered her face with her hands. But when she lifted her head again her face was smiling. She went to the dressing table and combed her hair. She passed into Emlyn’s room and began to look for some odd job to do. She looked over his garments to see if any buttons were missing. All were in their places, and then she opened the drawer in which he kept his ties and collars. As usual, the drawer was untidy. She began to fold the things.
Among other oddments she found a scrap of paper on which was scrawled May Morgan, 30 Glasfryn Street, and she stood up to scrutinise it carefully. Then she tossed it back into the drawer with a gesture of disdain.
When she went downstairs Jacob was sleeping in the armchair, his hands clasped over his stomach. His mouth had dropped open and a thin line of saliva was descending from it. She laid the supper quietly, so that he should not waken. Her senses were marvellously tranquil; she moved about with soft, intimate movements, her face relaxed as though she were utterly at peace with the world.
Jacob ate his supper with chastened solemnity. She dreamily watched his wad of bread and cheese decrease. He took her long silence as a sign of grieved anger against him, and he anxiously studied her face, eager to see a sign of compassion.
Emlyn came in and joined them. He was slightly tipsy, and his face, handsome and flushed, seemed to give off a ruddy heat of ardour. He sat at the table and gazed round, a critical smile on his lips.
Jacob sniffed with deliberation.
‘God, we had a talk tonight!’ Emlyn exclaimed.
‘About what?’ asked Rebecca.
‘Socialism,’ he said exultingly.
Jacob sniffed again.
‘Wisdom was in your talk, no doubt,’ he said suavely. ‘Godly seems socialism after five or six pots of beer.’
‘Jacob, Jacob, a hard-bottomed old Tory you are getting. No wonder you are such a grizzler.’
