Story, Volume I

by Dai Smith

  Seems as though it will be too risky for you to go back this evening, he said; there’s a bit of a fog about. You’ll be stopping the night in Porthbychan? – and he wouldn’t let her go on holiday in the winter: said, if she did, he’d get a concubine to keep him warm, and he meant—

  A woman was talking to her friend outside the door.

  You cannot possibly cross the Race alone in this weather, Mrs Ritsin, persisted the postmaster.

  I must get back tonight, Mr Davies.

  He sketched the bay with a twitching arm, as if to say: I have bound the restless wave. He became confidential, turning to stretch across the counter.

  My dear Mrs Ritsin, no woman has ever before navigated these waters. Why, even on a calm day the Porthbychan fishers will not enter the Race. Be warned, dear lady. Imagine my feelings if you were to be washed up on the beach here.

  Bridget Ritsin said, I am afraid it is most important that I should get back tonight, Mr Davies.

  Ann Pritchard from the corner house slid from the glittering evening into the shadows of the post office. She spoke out of the dusk behind the door. It isn’t right for a woman to ape a man, doing a man’s work.

  Captain Morrison is ill. He couldn’t possibly come across today. That is why I’m in charge of the boat, Bridget answered.

  Two other women had slipped in against the wall of the shop. Now, four pairs of eyes bored into her face. With sly insolence the women threw ambiguous sentences to the postmaster, who smiled as he studied the grain in the wood of his counter. Bridget picked up a bundle of letters and turned to go. The tide will be about right now, she said. Good evening, Mr Davies. Be very, very careful, Mrs Ritsin, and remember me to the Captain.

  Laughter followed her into the street. It was like dying in agony, while crowds danced and mocked. O, my darling, my darling over the cold waves. She knew that while she was away he would try to do too much about the house. He would go to the well for water, looking over the fields he lacked strength to drain. He would be in the yard, chopping sticks. He would cough and spit blood. It isn’t as if the Captain took reasonable care of himself. When he ran too hard, when he moved anything heavy and lost his breath, he only struck his chest and cursed: blast my lung. Alec dear, you should not run so fast up the mountain. He never heeded her. He had begun to spit blood.

  By the bridge over the river, her friend Griff Owen was leaning against the side of a motor car, talking to a man and woman in the front seats. He said to them, ask her, as she came past.

  Excuse me, Miss, could you take us over to see the Island?

  I’m sorry, she said, there’s a storm coming up. It wouldn’t be possible to make the double journey.

  They eyed her, curious about her way of life.

  Griff Owen, and the grocer’s boy carrying two boxes of provisions, came down to the beach with her.

  I wouldn’t be you; going to be a dirty night, said the man.

  The waves were chopped and the headland was vague with hanging cloud. The two small islets in the bay were behind curtains of vapour. The sea was blurred and welcomeless. To the Island, to the Island. Here in the village, you opened a door: laughter and filthy jokes buzzed in your face. They stung and blinded. O my love, be patient, I am coming back to you, quickly, quickly, over the waves.

  The grocer’s boy put down the provisions on the sand near the tide edge. Immediately a shallow pool formed round the bottoms of the boxes.

  Wind seems to be dropping, said Griff.

  Yes, but I think there will be fog later on, she answered, sea fog. She turned to him. Oh, Griff, you are always so kind to me. What would we do without you?

  He laid a hand on her shoulder. Tell me, how is the Captain feeling in himself? I don’t like the thought of him being so far from the doctor.

  The doctor can’t do very much for him. Living in the clean air from the sea is good. These days he isn’t well, soon he may be better. Don’t worry, he is hanging on to life and the Island. They began to push the boat down over rollers towards the water. Last week Alec had said quite abruptly as he was stirring the boiled potatoes for the ducks: at least, you will have this land if I die.

  At least, I have the Island.

  Well, well, said the man, making an effort to joke; tell the Captain from me that I’ll come over to see him if he comes for me himself. Tell him I wouldn’t trust my life to a lady, even though the boat has got a good engine and knows her own way home.

  He shook her arm: you are a stout girl.

  Mr Davies coming down, said the boy, looking over his shoulder as he heaved on the side of the boat. The postmaster came on to the beach through the narrow passage between the hotel and the churchyard. His overcoat flapped round him in the wind. He had something white in his hand. The boat floated; Bridget waded out and stowed away her provisions and parcels. By the time she had made a second journey Mr Davies was at the water’s edge.

  Another letter for you, Mrs Ritsin, he said. Very sorry, it had got behind the old-age pension books. He peered at her, longing to know what was in the letter, dying to find out what her feelings would be when she saw the handwriting. He had already devoured the envelope with his eyes, back and front, reading the postmark and the two sentences written in pencil at the back. He knew it was a letter from Ceridwen to her husband.

  A letter for the Captain, said the postmaster, and watched her closely.

  Thank you. She took it, resisting the temptation to read the words that caught her eye on the back of the envelope. She put it away in the large pocket of her oilskin along with the rest.

  The postmaster sucked in his cheeks and mumbled something. So Mrs Morrison would be back here soon, he suddenly shot at her. Only the grocer’s boy, whistling as he kicked the shingle, did not respond to what he said. Griff looked from her to the postmaster; she studied the postmaster’s hypocritical smile. Her head went up, she was able to smile: oh, yes, of course, Mrs Morrison is sure to come over when the weather is better. What did he know, why should he want to know?

  It was like a death; every hour that she had to spend on the mainland gave her fresh wounds.

  Thank you, Mr Davies. Goodbye Griff, see you next week if the weather isn’t too bad. She climbed into the motor boat and weighed anchor. She bent over the engine and it began to live. The grocer’s boy was drifting away, still kicking the beach as if he bore it a grudge. Mr Davies called in a thin voice… great care… wish you would… the Race and…

  Griff waved, and roared like a horn: tell him I’ll take the next calf if it is a good one.

  It was his way of wishing her Godspeed. Linking the moment’s hazard to the safety of future days.

  She waved her hand. The men grew small, they and the gravestones of blue and green slate clustered round the medieval church at the top of the sand. The village drew into itself, fell into perspective against the distant mountains.

  It was lonely in the bay. She took comfort from the steady throbbing of the engine. She drew Ceridwen’s letter from her pocket. She read: if it is very fine, Auntie Grace and I will come over next weekend. Arriving Saturday teatime Porthbychan; please meet.

  Now she understood what Mr Davies had been getting at. Ceridwen and the aunt. She shivered suddenly and felt the flesh creeping on her face and arms. The sea was bleak and washed of colour under the shadow of a long roll of mist that stretched from the level of the water almost to the sun. It was nine o’clock in the evening. She could not reach the anchorage before ten and though it was summertime, darkness would have fallen before she reached home. She hoped Alec’s dog would be looking out for her on the headland.

  The wind blew fresh, but the wall of mist did not seem to move at all. She wondered if Penmaen du and the mountain would be visible when she rounded the cliffs into the Race. Soon now she should be able to see the Island mountain. She knew every Islandman would sooner face a storm than fog.

  So Ceridwen wanted to come over, did she? For the weekend, and with the aunt’s support. Perhaps she had he
ard at last that another woman was looking after her sick husband that she did not want but over whom she was jealous as a tigress. The weekend was going to be merry hell. Bridget realised that she was very tired.

  The mainland, the islets, the clifftop farms of the peninsula fell away. Porpoise rolling offshore towards the Race made her heart lift for their companionship.

  She took a compass bearing before she entered the white silence of the barren wall of fog. Immediately she was both trapped and free. Trapped because it was still daylight and yet she was denied sight, as if blindness had fallen, not blindness where everything is dark, but blindness where eyes are filled with vague light and they strain helplessly. Is it that I cannot see, is this blindness? The horror was comparable to waking on a black winter night and being unable to distinguish anything, until in panic she thought, has my sight gone? And free because the mind could build images on walls of mist, her spirit could lose itself in tunnels of vapour.

  The sound of the motor boat’s engine was monstrously exaggerated by the fog. Like a giant heart it pulsed: thump, thump. There was a faint echo, as if another boat, a ghost ship, moved near by. Her mind had too much freedom in these gulfs.

  The motor boat began to pitch like a bucking horse. She felt depth upon depth of water underneath the boards on which her feet were braced. It was the Race. The tide poured across her course. The brightness of cloud reared upward from the water’s face. Not that it was anywhere uniform in density; high up there would suddenly be a thinning, a tearing apart of vapour with a wan high blue showing through, and once the jaundiced, weeping sun was partly visible, low in the sky, which told her that she was still on the right bearing. There were grey-blue caverns of shadow that seemed like patches of land, but they were effaced in new swirls of cloud, or came about her in imprisoning walls, tunnels along which the boat moved only to find nothingness at the end. Unconsciously, she had gritted her teeth when she ran into the fog bank. Her tension remained. Two ghosts were beside her in the boat, Ceridwen, in a white fur coat, was sitting amidships and facing her, huddled together, cold and unhappy in the middle of the boat, her knees pressed against the casing of the engine. Alec’s ghost sat in the bows. As a figurehead he leaned away from her, his face half lost in opaque cloud.

  I will get back safely, I will get home, she said aloud, looking ahead to make the image of Ceridwen fade. But the phantom persisted; it answered her spoken thought.

  No, you’ll drown, you won’t ever reach the anchorage. The dogfish will have you.

  I tell you I can do it. He’s waiting for me, he needs me.

  Alec turned round, his face serious. When you get across the Race, if you can hear the fog-horn, he said quietly, you are on the wrong tack. If you can’t hear it, you’re all right; it means you are cruising safely along the foot of the cliffs…

  When you get home, will you come to me, be my little wife?

  Oh, my dear, she answered, I could weep or laugh that you ask me now, here. Yes, if I get home.

  Soon you’ll be on the cold floor of the sea, said Ceridwen.

  Spouts of angry water threatened the boat that tossed sideways. Salt sprays flew over her.

  Careful, careful, warned Alec. We are nearly on Pen Cader, the rocks are near now, we are almost out of the Race.

  A seabird flapped close to her face, then with a cry swerved away, its claws pressed backward.

  Above the noise of the engine there was now a different sound, that of water striking land. For an instant she saw the foot of a black cliff. Wet fangs snapped at her. Vicious fangs, how near they were. Shaken by the sight, by the rock death that waited, she turned the boat away from the Island. She gasped as she saw white spouting foam against the black and slimy cliff. She was once more alone. Alec and Ceridwen, leaving her to the sea, had been sucked into the awful cloud, this vapour without substance or end. She listened for the foghorn. No sound from the lighthouse. A break in the cloud above her head drew her eyes. A few yards of the mountaintop of the Island was visible, seeming impossibly high, impossibly green and homely. Before the eddying mists rejoined she saw a thin shape trotting across the steep grass slope, far, far up near the crest of the hill. Leaning forward, she said aloud: O look, the dog. It was Alec’s dog keeping watch for her. The hole in the mist closed up, the shroud fell thicker than ever. It was terrible, this loneliness, this groping that seemed as if it might go on forever.

  Then she heard the low-throated horn blaring into the fog. It came from somewhere on her right hand. So in avoiding the rocks she had put out too far to sea and had overshot the anchorage. She must be somewhere off the southern headland near the pirate’s rock. She passed a line of lobster floats.

  She decided to stop the engine and anchor where she was hoping that the fog would clear at nightfall. Then she would be able to return on to her proper course. There was an unnatural silence after she had cut off the engine. Water knocked against the boat.

  Cold seeped into her bones from the planks. With stiff wet hands she opened the bag of provisions, taking off the crust of a loaf and spreading butter on it with her gutting knife. As she ate, she found that for the first time in weeks she had leisure in which to review her life. For when she was on the farm it was eat, work, sleep, in rotation.

  I have sinned or happiness is not for me, she thought. It was her heart’s great weakness that she could not rid herself of superstitious beliefs.

  Head in hands, she asked: But how have I sinned? I didn’t steal another woman’s husband. They had already fallen apart when I first met Alec. Is too great a happiness itself a sin? Surely it’s only because I am frightened of the fog that I ask, have I sinned, is this my punishment? When the sun shines I take happiness with both hands. Perhaps it’s wrong to be happy when half the people of the world are chain-bound and hungry, cut off from the sun. If you scratch below the surface of most men’s minds you find that they are bleeding inwardly. Men want to destroy themselves. It is their only hope. Each one secretly nurses the death wish, to be god and mortal in one; not to die at nature’s order, but to cease on his own chosen day. Man has destroyed so much that only the destruction of all life will satisfy him.

  How can it be important whether I am happy or unhappy? And yet it’s difficult for me to say, I am only one, what does my fate matter? For I want to be fulfilled like other women. What have I done to be lost in winding sheets of fog?

  And he will be standing in the door wondering that I do not come.

  For how long had she sat in the gently-rocking boat? It was almost dark and her eyes smarted from constant gazing. Mist weighed against her eyeballs. She closed her eyes for relief.

  Something was staring at her. Through drawn lids she felt the steady glance of a sea creature. She looked at the darkening waves. Over an area of a few yards she could see; beyond, the wave was cloud, the cloud was water. A dark, wet-gleaming thing on the right. It disappeared before she could make out what it was. And then, those brown beseeching eyes of the seal cow. She had risen near by, her mottled head scarcely causing a ripple. Lying on her back in the grey-green gloom of the sea she waved her flippers now outwards to the woman, now inwards to her white breast, saying, come to me, come to me, to the caverns where shark bones lie like tree stumps, bleached, growth-ringed like trees.

  Mother seal, seal cow. The woman stretched out her arms. The attraction of those eyes was almost strong enough to draw her to salt death. The head disappeared. The dappled back turned over in the opaque water, and dived. Bridget gripped the side of the boat, praying that this gentle visitant should not desert her.

  Hola, hola, hola, seal mother from the eastern cave.

  Come to me, come to me, come to me. The stone-grey head reappeared on the other side, on her left. Water ran off the whiskered face, she showed her profile; straight nose, and above, heavy lids drooping over melancholy eyes. When she plunged showing off her prowess, a sheen of pearly colours ran over the sleek body.

  They watched one another until the light fai
led to penetrate the fog. After the uneasy summer twilight had fallen, the woman was still aware of the presence of the seal.

  She dozed off into a shivering sleep through which she heard faintly the snorting of the sea creature. A cold, desolate sound. Behind that again was the bull-throated horn bellowing into the night.

  She dreamt: Alec was taking her up the mountain at night under a sky dripping with blood. Heaven was on fire. Alec was gasping for breath. The other islanders came behind, their long shadows stretching down the slope. The mountaintop remained far off. She never reached it.

  Out of dream, she swam to consciousness, painfully leaving the dark figures of fantasy. A sensation of swimming upward through fathoms of water. The sea of her dreams was dark and at certain levels between sleeping and waking a band of light ran across the waves. Exhaustion made her long to fall back to the sea floor of oblivion, but the pricking brain floated her at last on to the surface of morning.

  She awoke with a great wrenching gasp that flung her against the gunwale. Wind walked the sea. The fog had gone, leaving the world raw and disenchanted in the false dawn. Already, gulls were crying for a new day. Wet and numb with cold, the woman looked about her. At first it was impossible to tell off what shore the boat was lying. For a few minutes it was enough to know that she was after all at anchor so close to land.