Story, Volume I

by Dai Smith

  She was also fortunate to have found refuge in the institution. It was neat and clean there. She had a wireless. There was a view of the mountains and of the sea. Her two rooms were self-contained. There was an extensive garden and orchard for the use of all the inmates equally. Well away from the road, very, very quiet. Wonderful spot really. It really was time he stopped calling her an unfortunate woman.

  A knock on the wall summoned him to his tea. As he feared they were already lost in some cloud cuckoo land of the kind that most annoyed him. A dream of the Continent that implied that Cardiganshire and the place of his birth were both dreary and barbarous, outside the pale. The Rector was deeply attached to his birthplace and therefore this kind of talk was not merely uncongenial, but wounding.

  ‘Well, that summer, I was only sixteen at the time – the Emperor spent a week at the schloss. He asked especially for Lisa. You wouldn’t believe it but I was considered good looking and good company in those days. I had to accompany him on the most unexpected excursions. Fishing, walking, boating on the Ossiachersee, visiting one of the elementary schools and opening a new road…’

  Living in the past. Fifty years ago, nearer sixty. It annoyed him. Spoiling his tea with the Emperor story again. Vienna Woods next. Old Splendour. If he’d heard that tale once… and Meg had heard it even oftener… and there she was listening, enchanted. Puerile romanticism, that’s what it was. This unfortunate woman was forever hymning the glories of her foreign past, or bemoaning the discomforts and miseries of her present. Everything was wonderful fifty years ago, everything was better, especially in Austria. Should he bother to argue? Ask her about the peasants, how they fared, and the non-German nationalities? And the hill farmers, leading their hard and virtuous lives? She was impossible to argue with. She would just wear you down. No possibility of changing her mind. She’d been brought up a Roman Catholic of course; no idea that there were two sides to every question. Best to keep quiet and think of something else.

  ‘But here I am, living on charity in dear little Wales and boring your poor husband to tears. You really shouldn’t encourage me, Mrs Mayrick.’

  ‘Oh, but not at all.’ The Rector smiled stiffly.

  ‘You mustn’t notice Hywel, Mrs Armitage. The poor dear always looks bored, even when he’s reading the Manchester Guardian cricket reports. And that’s about the most exciting thing, apart from rugby football, isn’t it, dear?’

  Meg was inclined to go too far in front of strangers.

  ‘Do you know, dear Mrs Mayrick, I sometimes have the most weird feeling as if I were making it all up, as if people don’t really believe that it all happened, that such a world ever existed, that I ever belonged to it. I feel now as if all my life, all my years, and I’ve got so many of them, had been spent in the institution. And yet I’ve known how wonderful it can be just to be alive – skiing when the air is so cold and still the movement of your body seems to cleave the air. But who would believe an old wreck like me had even seen skis, let alone been on them.’

  ‘You ought to write,’ Mrs Mayrick said impulsively, as if hit by a great idea for the first time. The Rector had heard her say it at least twice before. ‘Write your memoirs, Mrs Armitage.’

  It was an astonishing fact to realise, that for the moment neither of them was conscious of having been through the whole conversation on several previous occasions – and in his presence. Even that bit about the air being so still. Really the capabilities of the female mind for self-delusion! Now she was saying she would have to write in German and that her German was by now rusty and bad, almost as bad as her French. No doubt it was true that when talking about their favourite subjects people never noticed how often they repeated themselves. While he was wondering whether he could decently get away, to his great relief, the old woman began to say it was time for her to go.

  ‘Not that I have any pressing engagements.’ Her head trembled humorously. ‘But it is time I relieved you of my presence. You have been too kind as it is.’

  He was, he felt, as he genially followed them to the front door, being let off unusually lightly. He hadn’t had to listen to her usual tale of woe about the institution. But wait a moment, what were they whispering about so animatedly outside the front door?

  ‘Hywel!’ Now what was it?

  ‘Has that cottage at the end of the lower village been let, do you know?’

  Confound Megan, encouraging the woman! ‘Not yet, but it soon will be.’

  ‘Do you think Mrs Armitage could apply? How could you help her, Hywel?’

  They misunderstood his silence, assuming he was thinking of ways and means. Actually he was attempting to suppress his rage.

  ‘It would be so wonderful,’ there was a false-blissful continental note in her voice that deeply invoked him: her eyes turned shakily heavenwards; at her age, he thought, it was clearly immoral, ‘to be left in peace. Those terrible caretaker’s children and Miss Hoxham and Miss Whitely have been really terrible this week.’ Then she put a crooked finger to her mouth, and smiled, a grotesque caricature of a girlish smile. ‘But I swore to myself I wouldn’t complain this time, and I’m not going to.’

  ‘My dear Mrs Armitage,’ the Rector burst out so loudly that both women were quite startled, ‘it would be very wrong of me to raise your hopes. There is absolutely no prospect of your getting that cottage. There are at least six families competing for it. I sympathise greatly with your position, I really do, but the housing position in general being what it is, you cannot hope to obtain a cottage or a small house for rent. It’s very hard I know, but—’

  ‘Hywel, dear! Hywel! Please don’t get so excited. We were only wondering and hoping. Mrs Armitage, that knee of yours looks stiff again. Hywel, why don’t you bring out the car and run Mrs Armitage down to the institution?’

  ‘Of course, of course.’

  ‘No! Please. I won’t hear of it. It’s very kind of you both, but I insist on walking. It will do me good. A beautiful evening. I am too much indoors. Sometimes I get afraid to venture in and out, I’m so silly. Goodbye, both of you. Goodbye.’

  She was hobbling awkwardly down the drive, turning occasionally to wave.

  ‘Shall I go after her?’ Hywel asked doubtfully.

  ‘She wants to walk, poor dear. And you want to get back to your paper. Mustn’t leave the Manchester Guardian unfinished, darling.’

  He wanted to say she was trying to make him feel small. And yet she was smiling sweetly enough. So instead, he drew on the store of his wisdom and resorted to his deepest Cardiganshire silence.

  II

  Mrs Armitage made her way up the narrow lane, leaning heavily upon her ebony stick, and breathing hard. It had been unwise of her to stay so long at the shoemaker’s on her way home from the Rectory. She hated the institution so much, she had wanted to delay her return to the last moment, until after dark if possible so as not to see the great square prison of a building stuck down among weedy fields and straggling anaemic trees on the edge of the top village. But the shoemaker was an amusing man and his eldest daughter was learning German at school and they always made her welcome. It was about the only place in the village, where she had something to give and could really be sure she wasn’t a nuisance or a burden. At the shoemaker’s they treated her – not like visiting royalty of course; no, better than that, like a fellow human being worthy of real respect. That was it.

  But now struggling up the ominously silent lane, too weak to hurry, fear took a stronger grip on her than ever in her life before. There had been a time once on Triglav, seeking edelweiss, when feeling an effort to ascend the crevasse was beyond her strength and that death was waiting – forty years ago, why should she think of it now? – she had shivered with uncontrollable fright, but this was really far worse. This was an humiliating, cruel, beetle-crushing fear, that jeered at her and told her she was worth nothing, a parasite, a wasp, a filthy worthless fly, fit only to be exterminated. She felt too weak to disagree with the verdict; therefore at any mome
nt the fatal blow would fall.

  She heard a distinct titter. A moon-faced child with red eyes showed its unpleasant face over the top of the bank.

  ‘Fancy face! Fancy face! Fancy face!’ Oh God, they had started. Why couldn’t she walk faster? Now they were in the gloomy lane behind her, jumping and jeering. ‘Foreign spy, yah, wicked witch! Burn the witch! Yah! Yah! Burn the witch!’

  Grasping the wooden handrail, panting, she felt she would never gather enough strength to drag herself up the stone stairs to the first floor where she lived. She didn’t want to collapse on the stairs. God knows what they would do to her, what insults. She just had to get up and that was what she had to do, and she would do it and do it quickly and not kill herself, and put herself decently the other side of the locked door of her room.

  How delectable the inside of that little room looked now, her refuge. Yes, it was after all quite cosy. It was there. She could get to it. Not like the schloss which had gone forever out of her reach, dissolved into a dream. So far, far away. Somebody else’s life. This was her life, this terrible struggle.

  And at the top of the stairs, Miss Hoxham and Miss Whitely would be lurking, their little front doors ajar, ready to hear the clump of the struggling footsteps on the wooden stairs, cats waiting to pounce, to fix their claws in her. Couldn’t she fight back? No. Her breeding was against her, kept her silent, infuriating them more, leaving her open, helpless, defenceless victim, inviting attack.

  On the last step, the old woman dropped her stick and it went clattering down, to be retrieved by the enemy below with subdued yells of triumph. Here they dared not shout so loudly but their whispers came shooting up the stairs: ‘Ah ha, old witch, we’ve got your stick! Ah ha, old witch, we’ve got your stick! We’ll break your back with it! Come on, Fancy face, come down and get it.’ Their worthless, whining parents knew very well they were at it. No doubt they were listening now or trying to make out the fun from behind the dirty lace curtains of their back window. Would she ever get that stick back, the Archduke’s stick? Not now. Mr Mayrick perhaps could get it for her, if he wouldn’t be too cross.

  ‘What’s all the noise?’ Miss Whitely’s voice grated like nutmeg on a scraper. ‘Oh! It’s you. Making trouble again, eh? It’s time you cleared out of here. I’ll report you. You’re not entitled to be here anyway.’

  Miss Hoxham’s door opened. The pretty little old lady’s voice hissed like a snake. ‘I should say so too. No right at all. She should be behind bars, that’s where she should be, put away. She’s a spy. A German spy!’

  ‘Report to the Chairman, right over Mr Mayrick’s head, that’s what I’ll do.’ Miss Whitely’s harsh bass mingled freely with Miss Hoxham’s bittersweet hiss. ‘Thinks because she’s friendly with the Rector’s wife. Who’s she anyway? There are those above him.’

  ‘Quite a simple matter. All traitors should swing. She’d look good hanging up by the neck. She would… straighten her crooked back I don’t doubt. No right here at all…’

  Mrs Armitage stumbled blindly along to her own door.

  ‘I’ve told the police about her. It’s a public disgrace that we have to have her here.’

  ‘She ought to swing and that’s a fact.’

  ‘The trouble she causes. This is a rest home for English gentlewomen of good birth, so what right I ask…’

  Mrs Armitage fumbled desperately with the lock.

  ‘Bolting like a rabbit into her hole without a word.’

  ‘Thinks she’s too good to speak to the likes of us.’

  ‘They hang traitors, why shouldn’t she swing…’

  At last the door was closed. The relentless voices cut off. Some kind of peace attained. But her heart was hurting. Her whole body was in pain. She was worried about the precious walking stick the Archduke had given her. If she could light the paraffin stove, prepare herself a cup of coffee. Find a book to console her for the loss of the stick. Somehow get into bed. Read about the old times and forget all this. She would like to read poetry. Something to remind her of better days, old days, golden days. Something romantic to take away the bad taste. What were those charming poems that came out just before the first war, about the Slovene legend of the Chamois with the golden horns and about the snow roses – the red snow roses? The Archduke had given them to her for her birthday. Such a beautiful edition and such a special day, a special dedication: To my dearest Liza, with a prayer for her happiness.

  It was on top of the glass cupboard wrapped in brown paper, a private treasure. On top of a chair she could reach it. Stretch a bit. Oh, where was her strength? She must have it, it would soothe her so. Those horrible people had reduced her so, beaten down her spirit. She was so weak. She must not forget what she had once been, once known. Must not forget. Stretch! The book was between her fingers. A dizziness swept over her suddenly; she lost control; she came toppling down.

  All that night the room was dark and completely silent, like a tomb.

  III

  ‘I should have been informed sooner. She may be lying there.’

  ‘Don’t, Hywel.’ Mrs Mayrick sat beside her husband in their pre-war Wolseley. ‘Do you think the car will go up the lane?’

  The caretaker’s children scrambled up a bank to get out of the way of the advancing car that filled up the entire width of the lane.

  ‘Wouldn’t be a bad idea to accelerate and go over them.’

  ‘Meg! Really!’

  ‘Little pests. It’s time you looked around for new caretakers. They’ve made her life hell. These really aren’t fit…’

  Together they hurried up the stone stairs. Miss Whitely, masticating the last remnants of her late lunch, peeped excitedly through an inch of open door. The Mayricks hurried on to No. 3. He glanced at the key in his hand, with the label written in long Central European handwriting.

  ‘Wait outside, Meg,’ he said firmly.

  ‘She may only have fainted, Hywel.’

  ‘We’ll soon see.’

  Shaking with apprehension, she remained outside, closing her eyes, but counting instead of praying.

  ‘Meg!’ His stout form seemed extraordinarily bulky on the small threshold. She looked at him anxiously. He nodded slowly. She thrust her gloved fists into her face and began sobbing.

  ‘You’d better go to the car, my dear…’

  ‘No, Hywel. I want to see her. And see her poor little room for the last time.’

  With gentle, friendly curiosity at last she knelt beside the twisted black form. The head was thrown backwards, the face frozen in animal surprise.

  ‘She must have been trying to reach down this parcel from the top of the cupboard. She still had her hat on. It’s a book.’ Hurriedly, as if she feared her husband might stop her, Meg tore off the tattered brown paper. ‘A German book. Poetry. Hywel, may I keep it?’

  He spoke slowly, heavily. ‘Oddly enough everything in this room should now be yours.’

  ‘Mine?’

  ‘She wanted me to draw up a will, leaving her belongings to you, dear.’

  ‘Oh the poor darling, the poor old thing. She had nobody, nobody but me.’

  Mrs Mayrick wept bitterly. ‘Oh, if only I’d have done more for her,’ she kept saying. She would not leave with her husband when he went to fetch the doctor and the police. She was going to stand guard, she said. She told him firmly but calmly to shut the door. ‘In case those vandals come peeping,’ she said. ‘It’s the least I can do.’

  The Rector hastened about his business, worried about his wife.

  The doctor, who knew him well, was surprised about what appeared to be the Rector’s unconcern. When he broke the news he seemed to be preoccupied with other things as if her death was a matter of small importance. This was unlike Mayrick because normally he took every aspect of his duties very seriously, and to the doctor’s way of thinking, too ponderously.

  They found Mrs Mayrick sitting at the old lady’s small bureau. Anxiously her husband hurried to her. She was smiling and seemed quite u
naware now that she was in the same room as a corpse. The Rector put his arm protectively about her shoulders. Had he known Meg really wanted it, he would have drawn up the will on the spot. She was a wonderful wife and he did not appreciate her enough. Also some of these things, part of the property, could be of some value. Prices of antiques were sometimes high. There was a price to historical value too.

  ‘Hywel!’ she said. The three men looked at her, struck by the elated note in her voice. ‘She was the daughter of an archduke – a natural daughter. She was the niece of the last Emperor. A Hapsburg. Can you believe that?’

  The doctor and the policeman shook their heads simultaneously and turned to look at the body.

  ONE LIFE

  Alun Richards

  On the day of her husband’s funeral, Lydia Skuse was more composed than anyone had expected. Leonard had always said he would go in February and although the funeral took place on the first of March, his death had about it the predictable order of things which she had come to expect of life. He had died as he said he would, in the first months of his retirement, and when she returned from the grave and the few mourners had gone, she declined her sister-in-law’s offer of tea and retired alone to the front room of the terraced house in Dan y Graig Street.

  She wanted to sit by herself and put her thoughts in order. She had decisions to make. Soon her sister-in-law, Ada, would ask what she intended to do with the house and whether or not she would leave it and come and live with their family; and since that implied leaving her home town and all that she had known, Lydia wanted to go over it in her mind carefully before she gave her answer. She was a careful, neat little woman, not given to chatter, methodical and reasoned in all she did and, although at sixty-five she was not as agile as she had been once, age was a great blessing because it relieved her of the pressure of feelings and anxieties which had once tortured her beyond belief.