Story, Volume I

by Dai Smith

  In a caught, nervous voice that sent a flame of anger over Emlyn, Rebecca said:

  ‘Go on, don’t you worry about me. Accustomed to being alone I am.’

  ‘Not very lonely were you in the evenings in Cardigan,’ Jacob said. ‘Seemed to me it did that plenty of louts were hanging about.’

  ‘Louts they were,’ she answered, regaining something of her natural demeanour. ‘And innocent of any behaviour I was.’

  Jacob went to hang his coat up in the passageway. And Emlyn shot an angry glance at Rebecca, who tossed her head. There was a strange glint in her eyes now.

  During supper she was mostly silent, replying in a short and vague fashion when the men spoke to her. She seemed occupied with some problem, her brow rather sombre. And in that mood Emlyn was afraid of her.

  Then from that night something entered the house. It was in the air like the still presence of death, it was in the drawn tension of Rebecca’s paling brow, it was in the forced jocular humour of Emlyn. And, too, in the frozen drop of Jacob’s eyelids as he sat in his chair, silent for long periods, there seemed a kind of foreboding, a chill.

  Rebecca’s conduct sometimes infuriated Emlyn. She would look at him with a long and shameless intensity when the three sat at a meal together: the expression of her whole body seemed to cry their secret. Once when they were alone he said to her:

  ‘Behave yourself, you fool. You make your thoughts plain as ABC. Old Jacob might be, but not a blind ape is he.’

  She set her jaw sullenly. ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘How is it you act so childish then!’ he exclaimed savagely.

  He was a different Emlyn now. She saw him contemptuously, his fear. Yet she was determined to force the issue. She said coldly: ‘A rabbit’s mind you’ve got.’

  ‘Rabbit be damned. Worse it would be for you if Jacob found out.’

  She drooped towards him. ‘Then always we could be together!’ She whispered with a sudden change of mood, her eyes gazing ardently upon him.

  He let her caress him: until he fixed his mouth upon hers with a fury that satisfied her. But with that he too had to be content. Rebecca was becoming wily.

  ‘Tomorrow night,’ he muttered drunkenly, ‘he will be at the deacons’ meeting.’

  ‘Suspicious he is getting,’ she said derisively. ‘Not a blind ape is he.’

  ‘Hell and Satan take him,’ he went on, ‘my female you will be tomorrow night.’

  She laughed.

  IX

  Tramping together to the pit in the early morning, Jacob said to Emlyn:

  ‘What is coming over the woman? Noticed you have, Emlyn, how changed she is?’

  ‘Yes,’ Emlyn answered irritably, ‘trying she is. Look you, my vest wasn’t dry this morning and my trousers was still damp in the corner where she threw them yesterday. And like a peevish owl she is in the mornings now.’

  ‘Ah,’ muttered Jacob, ‘more to complain of I have.’

  Emlyn glanced aside at his half-brother’s face. Its sharp grey profile was outlined in the keen air as though cut out of cardboard, and it had a flat, dead expression. Emlyn felt a moment’s pity for Rebecca: what joy could she have from this arid mechanism of dry flesh walking beside him?

  ‘Happy you seem with her,’ he said with a note of surprise.

  ‘She keeps herself cold to me,’ Jacob said. ‘Yet like a playful little mare she was before we were married.’

  ‘Difficult is the first year or so with a woman like Rebecca,’ Emlyn observed wisely.

  ‘Mine she is,’ said Jacob with sudden intensity. ‘Yet I will have her.’

  Emlyn said nothing. They tramped along, up the hill towards the pit in the far reach of the quiet vale. Emlyn became aware of something grim and warning in Jacob’s demeanour as he strode silently by his side. His face was still grey and inscrutable, but in his movements there was some dark austerity, like a warning. What was brooding in that shut, resentful mind?

  They were joined by other colliers, dark-browed under their caps, tramping in a ragged black procession to the pit, under the dawning sky. Across the bridge the sound of their footsteps softened in the thick black coal dust; they trooped into the alleyways between the black-coated sheds and the lines of small coal trucks, up to the lamp-room, where they were given their polished lit lamps.

  Jacob and Emlyn kept together: they worked side by side. At the shaft they waited their turn to enter the cage. The two wheels aloft spun against the metal sky and dropped their thick and shining ropes taut into the gaping hole beneath: one cage emerged and clashed loudly into stillness. Jacob and Emlyn, with fourteen others, crowded in, and ahead a bell clamoured. The cage descended like a stone.

  Arrived at the bottom, a brick-walled tunnel sloped away in the shrill electric light, slimy and dripping. The colliers tramped on, at the side of the rail track, until the walled tunnel ceased and the workings began, propped up by timber. Now light came only from the tiny flames of their lamps. The narrow rail track twisted its way with them, between the walls of rock and timber, the thin rails like twin nerves going deeper and deeper into the rich silence of the earth.

  The two half-brothers trudged on without a word, stooping under the beams that held off the earth above, splashing through the pools of black water, until they were alone in their own working.

  It was a small clearing thick with props of timber and heaps of stone: at one side the coalface gleamed and sparkled in the lamplight, jutting generous and lively out of the dead earth.

  Jacob was looking at the roof examiningly.

  ‘Lewis put it all right afterwards?’ Emlyn inquired.

  ‘He’s been here,’ Jacob said. He put his hand on a prop and tried to move it: there was a faint creaking sound. ‘It’s all right,’ he added, and passed to examine another part of the clearing. Emlyn threw off his upper garments and began to attack the coalface; soon he was absorbed, sweating, in the task of removing the coal from its bed, oblivious of Jacob, who, half naked also, was working twenty yards away, still fumbling with the timber props and beams.

  The hours passed and at ten o’clock the two men paused for a meal. Emlyn’s face and body was now black with dust, save where the sweat ran down in streaks; tense from his labour, crouching under the coalface, his eyes shone out blood-red and liquid.

  ‘God above, how difficult the seam is getting, Jacob,’ he panted, looking round for his food tin. ‘Where’s my box?’

  ‘Here,’ came Jacob’s voice. He was standing, a dark crouching shape beyond the lamplight, ten yards away.

  ‘What you doing there?’ Emlyn asked. ‘Still messing with the timber?’

  He advanced, ducking his head under the low beams.

  Then something moved overhead, as he ducked: there was a sharp creak followed by a tearing as of wood slowly snapping. Emlyn turned sharply, and his face showed caught and vulnerable for an instant. Then the space was choked with stone and dust.

  Jacob clambered down from his perch in the darkness, ran shouting through the clearing, out into the other workings. His hoarse shout for help leapt with a peculiar deadened sound through the still, hot tunnels.

  Men came running up, ducking like strange other-world creatures in the dark alleys, wild-eyed and tense.

  ‘A fall,’ Jacob shouted, ‘my brother is under.’

  There were cries of dismay when they saw the heap of stone.

  ‘Jesus!’

  ‘Quick! Hell, what a job.’

  ‘Ach, not much hope is there.’

  They crowded round, worked with feverish haste, shovelling, pulling away with their hands the rock and earth. Jacob clawed like a possessed beast at the rubble, his eyes glaring manically.

  ‘Right on the head, right on the head,’ he kept on shouting. ‘I saw it falling.’

  ‘Stay you away,’ one collier muttered, ‘we’ll get at him soon enough.’

  A large stone had caught him – it lay upon his head and shoulders. There was a heavy smell of blood. They heaved at
the rock. Jacob left them alone to their final task. He stood leaning against a prop, his head sunk in his shoulders. He heard a collier’s sharp intaken breath as he muttered:

  ‘Christ! a bloody mess.’

  And Jacob’s nostrils quivered and paled in the stench of blood.

  X

  They laid him, a shape covered in some dark coarse cloth, on his bed, and, their faces closed and grave, went out softly – the four colliers who had brought him home. They heard the wild, shrill weeping of Jacob’s wife in the living room and the comforting voice of her neighbour. Jacob shut the door behind them and upon the little crowd of people gathered on the pavement.

  Rebecca’s frightened voice was lapsing into sobs now. As Jacob entered the living room she lifted her head from the woman’s arms and he stared at her fixedly. Her wild face was drenched with tears, her mouth moving pitiably in its sobs.

  ‘Hush, Rebecca,’ he said sternly.

  The neighbour protested. ‘Let her work it off. Natural is it for her to be frightened. Low enough she has looked lately.’

  But his face was stern and sombre, his eyes fixed in a cold, remorseless stare.

  ‘I will wash and change,’ he said, ‘and go out. Many things are there to arrange. Stay you with her, Mrs Evans, until I come back this evening.’

  Rebecca burst into further tears.

  ‘Don’t leave me alone in the house,’ she wept.

  ‘Why should you fear death?’ said Jacob darkly. ‘Life it is that we should fear.’ And he strode into the kitchen to wash.

  Later he went out of the house without another word.

  ‘Strange he is,’ commented Mrs Evans. ‘Affected by the accident he must be. Daft in the eyes he looked.’

  ‘Yes,’ Rebecca whispered, ‘it’s of him I am frightened.’

  ‘Tut, tut, harmless enough is old Jacob Jenkins,’ said the other. ‘Shaken him has his brother’s death! Fond of each other they were.’

  Rebecca shook her head. And she could not keep her hands from trembling. There was a stern and terrible presence in the house, a horror that was closing round her tenaciously and icily, like a freezing drug gripping into her consciousness. What had she seen in Jacob’s face when he looked at her? What dark warning had been there?

  Trembling and pale to the lips, she awaited his return. He arrived back about seven o’clock and asked:

  ‘Have you lit the candles for him?’

  Mrs Evans said they hadn’t, and Jacob took two brass candlesticks from the mantelshelf.

  ‘I will go back now then,’ Mrs Evans said. Rebecca made a gesture towards her, then sank into her chair: and the woman went off, after a sharp inquisitive glance at Jacob.

  In silence he fixed the candles and lit them. At last Rebecca said tremulously: ‘Is it arranging about the funeral you were?’

  Without looking at her he answered:

  ‘I have been on the mountain. I fled to the hills for silence and prayer.’

  ‘Awful for you it must have been,’ she whispered. ‘Killed at once he was?’

  Jacob slowly raised his head and looked at his wife.

  ‘No. I had words from him before he died.’

  Her eyelids dropped quickly, she moved nervously in her chair. He took the candles and went to the stairs. There he turned and said:

  ‘Come you up when I call, Rebecca Jenkins.’

  With a numbed heart she watched him. Ah, what terrible meaning was in his voice and his look! There was something he knew. Her faculties seemed to shrink within her, she felt the horror grip at her will. He knew, he knew. She was seized with panic and yet she could not move. Like a lodestone the will of Jacob held her in its power, she could not move out of the warning of his look. She would have to go to him and tell him all. Emlyn was gone and there was no strength to which she might cling. She would have to tell him all and pray for his forgiveness. She would serve him and give of her body, all she had, to the last shred of her being. She would content herself with buying pretty clothes and going to chapel to display them, she would make a friend of young Mrs Rowlands and they would go out together in the evenings. Tearfully she thought this, her head sunk in her shoulders, her hands still trembling, while the minutes passed. Her face began to look wild and obsessed. Suddenly she dropped her face into her hands and moaned aloud. No, no, she could not bear the thought of living alone with Jacob, it would be horrible, horrible now.

  ‘Rebecca!’

  Violently she started in the chair.

  ‘Rebecca.’ His voice was stern.

  She forced herself to answer. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Here I want you.’

  She stood up and her body seemed to droop within itself. She heard him go back into Emlyn’s bedroom. What did he want of her up there, what could she do! But she knew that some awful revelation was waiting, that a deathly horror was gathered in that room for her. For a moment she looked round wildly, as though to flee. And yet there was something reassuring in this familiar room, her living room, where she had laboured and lived in so much loneliness the last year. Ach, she would face him. What if he did know! She had something to tell him. An old man like him. She would not stand in fear of any man. Yet she felt her heart plunging as she slowly climbed the stairs, into the silent darkness of the upper floor.

  The door of Emlyn’s bedroom was shut, and for a moment she crouched before it in acute dread. Then again came Jacob’s voice, sharp, imperious: ‘Rebecca.’

  Why should he bully her! The old fool. She opened the door and entered quickly, demanding: ‘What do you want?’

  The two candles were burning on the little mantelshelf. Jacob was seated beneath them, the Bible open on his knees. He did not answer her question as she came in – only stared at her with his deadened eyes fixed unswervingly upon her. Then he rose, put the Bible on the seat, and took up a candlestick. Sombre and tall in his black clothes, his sere face began to kindle with a dull wrath. The shape on the bed had been covered with a white sheet.

  She crouched against the washstand by the further wall, and again her strength ebbed from her, her face paling to the lips. But she forced herself to speak, her voice coming in a dry gulp:

  ‘Afraid you make me, Jacob! How is it you are so strange?’

  He advanced to the bedside, holding the candle aloft.

  ‘There,’ he said, extending his finger downwards over the corpse, ‘there is your dead.’

  She stared at him. He went on: ‘Come you and look for the last time.’

  Her mouth had gone dry, she could not move her tongue to any word. She lifted her hand to her face, and her eyes were livid with fright.

  ‘Come,’ he repeated.

  She did not stir. His brows drawn, stern and righteous wrath in his countenance, he went to her and took her arm in his stony grasp. She quivered away from him, a curious sound coming from her lips, but, tightening his grasp, he drew her to the bedside. Her face had become sickly and loose, her breasts panted. Stonily Jacob looked down on her.

  ‘Gather yourself together, woman. Make yourself ready to look for the last time on what you have worshipped.’

  For a moment she went stiff and taut in his grasp, then, had he not held her, she would have fallen to the floor like a heap of rags. He put the candlestick down on the little table at the side of the bed, and with one gesture swept the white sheet away from the head and shoulders of the corpse. She saw. Jacob had taken the canvas wrapping from the filthy wax of the head and the horror lay there revealed in its congealed blood. Rebecca’s body quaked, her back bent forward, she screamed at last. Then Jacob half-carried, half-dragged her to a chair and sat her on it, as she moaned, her head dropping pitiably on her breast.

  He went back to the bed and covered the corpse. Then he took up the Bible again and sat down. And he began to read aloud:

  ‘And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them. And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a w
oman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,

  ‘They said unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.

  ‘Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?

  ‘This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.

  ‘So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her…’

  For a moment he was silent, glancing up at Rebecca. Her head still dropped on her breast, she sat immobile as one dead. He went on:

  ‘When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?

  ‘She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her,

  ‘Neither do I condemn thee: go and sin no more.’

  He closed the book, went on his knees, and, leaning his elbows on the chair, prayed:

  ‘Lord, who am I to condemn my wife Rebecca? Thy son forgave the woman taken in adultery and now I ask thee for strength to do likewise with Rebecca. Gone far in sin she has, dear Lord, looking with desire on the flesh of my brother Emlyn. And thou hast punished him with this visitation of death. The voice of the world would say, Stone her, cast her out, let her go from thee into the highways and byways. But have I not read the words of thy son! And what the great Jesus said has opened my heart in pity. Lord, forgive her her great sin against me. Tonight the hills cried out to me to slay her, the rocks mocked at my anguish, her name was written in letters of blood upon the sky. For before he died did not Emlyn confess to their behaviour together? Lord, she has done evil while her husband laboured for thee in thy chapel. Visit her with more punishment if thou wilt. Let her beauty shine no more, let her countenance be marked with grief, let her belly sicken her. But she shall rest quietly in her home with me, for I will not harden my sorrowing heart against her. For little Jesus’ sake. Amen.’

  He rose. Rebecca had covered her face with her hands. He went to her and touched her hair. She moaned.