The Truth Against the World

by Sarah Jamila Stevenson

  I let out a long breath. “I guess we know who Olwen’s father was. I just wish Gee Gee had told us.” It seemed so sad, and I couldn’t understand why the entire village wouldn’t have grieved the loss of Olwen. And then there was Great-Grandpa John. How did he fit into the picture?

  “I suppose because they weren’t married,” Gareth reminded me. I let out a frustrated noise. “Hey, let’s have a look at that diary.” He sounded like he was trying to be confident, but his voice trembled the slightest bit when he said the word “diary.” I glanced at him; his eyes were troubled. I’d known for a while now that Gee Gee had her secrets—Gareth was just finding out about his great-granddad’s.

  I reached out and squeezed his hand. He squeezed back, and then I let go.

  “Here it is,” I said, pulling the dark-blue notebook out of the box. I twisted my hair around my finger and waited as he flipped gently through the pages.

  “Well,” he said, “she’s got nice penmanship, but I still can’t catch more than a few words here and there. Like this”—he pointed at a sentence about halfway down the page—“‘Dw i ddim yn gallu deall ’ … that part means ‘I can’t understand.’ But I’m not sure about the rest of the sentence,” he concluded apologetically. “I guess that’s ironic, eh? The only part I can understand is the part about not understanding.” He smirked, and I felt the corners of my mouth twitch upward.

  I had to know what the diary contained. I had to find the missing parts of the story, the gap between Gee Gee’s teenage years and the time when she and Great-Grandpa John moved to the States. The small window of time during which Olwen had lived and died. Then maybe we could confront Mr. Lewis. If he confirmed the details, maybe then I could go to my parents with it and they’d believe me.

  I knew I couldn’t convince them with ghosts and dreams. But they wouldn’t be able to deny the physical evidence.

  “What do you think we should do now?” I asked. “My Welsh isn’t very good either. Not yet.”

  “Better than mine, I bet.” Gareth gave me a small smile, and for a second I forgot what we were supposed to be doing.

  “Know any good translation websites?” he said after a pause.

  “Well, I brought my laptop with me.” I opened it up, and Gareth did a quick search for “Welsh English translation.” It only took him moments to find a site that would translate any text you typed into a box.

  “You’re good at that,” I said.

  He grinned. “Hope you can type fast, because I’m crap at it.”

  Unfortunately, both of our efforts were wasted. The translation engine returned a string of confusing gibberish.

  “What’s this thing’s problem?” Gareth said in disbelief. “‘He is being heifer’?” He snorted a laugh. “I never thought I’d be the one to say this, but perhaps computers are not the solution to all of life’s troubles.”

  “Don’t blame my poor laptop. Without this very computer, we would never have met,” I pointed out, and Gareth laughed. “Why don’t we just try the dictionary? We both know a little Welsh, and we can just look up the difficult words.” I wasn’t ready to give up yet.

  “Er—okay.” Gareth’s voice was uncertain. “But I don’t remember much from school, I have to warn you.”

  I got my Welsh dictionary out of my backpack and put it on the table between us. “Why don’t we tackle the first entry, the one that says ‘15fed Mehefin’?”

  We plugged away for an hour, word by word, but by the end, all we’d managed was a single entry, peppered with question marks and blanks wherever we couldn’t figure out a word or phrase. I wasn’t even sure if it was accurate. It wasn’t elegant, that was for sure:

  15 June 1943

  More evacuees came to our school this week. She (It?) makes me so sad and angry I would like to march there to Germany myself! I truly mean it. Mam and Dad (??) if they knew. Half of the poor things are in their clothes for summer and without their coats. These were from village Bryn Coch a few miles away. Not like all the ones from England who are already settled in our houses and farms—the village children already know Welsh and are not so different. But truly, the ones from England are not so different either, only frightened, no matter what old Mrs. Williams says about them not to be blessed like us because they don’t (won’t?) go to chapel. Well, they do now, anyway.

  I had another dream last night, the ones Mam-gu Davies says I must listen to them. It was only images flashing past, some men working in a (??) coal and then the cromlech there by the old chapel Llanddewi, all (??). I can’t understand it (him?). I did hear Mr. Jones talking about the new chapel that they are building on border south of town, but hope they do not stop using the lovely old one.

  “Wow,” I said, when we’d finished.

  “Yeah.” Gareth stared at my laptop screen, covered in notes. “All we’ve done is one entry, and there’s how many still to go?”

  I flipped through the pages. “It looks like twelve.” I dropped the book on the table. “You’re right, this is taking way too long. And it’s really frustrating, too. Sorry. Not your fault.”

  “And old Mr. Smyth keeps glaring at us,” Gareth said, glancing over at the tall gray-haired man scowling behind the counter.

  I was tired and my stomach was starting to feel nauseated again with worry. “Well, what do we do now?”

  “We obviously can’t do it in less than a year, so we’ve got to get somebody to translate it,” Gareth said, leaning back in his chair. “There’s any number of people here in the village who are fluent in Welsh. We just have to find them.”

  “I’m not sure who we can trust, though.” I thought about those old ladies at the funeral, the ones who’d clearly been gossiping about Gee Gee.

  Gareth thought for a moment. “What about that woman, you know, the one at the bus station?”

  “Margie Jenkins?” I frowned. “I guess that’s possible.” But it felt wrong. There was something weird about it, since Margie had said that her mother disapproved of Gee Gee. And then the face of Margie’s husband Peter swam into my mind. I wasn’t sure why, but I didn’t want to talk to him, either.

  I really only knew one other person in town I trusted. “Let’s go to Hugh! Hugh and his wife, Annie. They’ve been helping me practice Welsh.”

  “You’re sure? I mean, Hugh’s a good sort, but do we want to drag him and his wife into this?” Gareth looked worried. His fingers tapped on the table lightly, a nervous drumbeat.

  “I think it’s good that they’re not really involved.” Plus, Hugh and Annie wouldn’t have the same prejudices, the old assumptions that had made life so hard for Gee Gee in the first place.

  “Okay. So, then, where do we find him at his time of day? Do we need to call a taxi?”

  “Perfect idea,” I said, grinning.

  After we’d waited in front of HMS Tasty’s for half an hour, Hugh pulled up in his black cab and parked it around the corner. It hadn’t taken more than a few minutes of explanation before he agreed to meet us.

  When I saw his balding head and bulky frame rounding the corner I felt like running to him, I was so relieved to see him. Gareth, on the other hand, seemed broody, almost morose. I could understand, kind of, but all I felt was urgency. It was four o’clock on my third-to-last day in Wales. By next week, I’d be gone—but I didn’t know if my dreams would be.

  “Annie’ll be here in a few minutes,” Hugh said, breaking into a broad grin. “So there’s a mystery to be solved, yeah?” He led us to a table in the back of the tiny eatery, separated from the kitchen by a section of wall. The aroma of fried grease and fish filled the air, and the windows were steamed up from the heat of cooking. Hugh waved at the man behind the counter and bought four orange Fantas, which he carefully placed in front of us as if it were a solemn ceremony.

  A moment later, Annie walked in, pulling the door shut behind her. Her short dark hair was tou
sled from the breeze, and she smiled as she sank into a chair. “Let’s see this mysterious document, then,” she said, sounding intrigued.

  “I can’t wait,” Hugh said. “They’ve hardly told me anything, these two.”

  “Of course not. They haven’t sworn you to secrecy yet. You might blab to the nearest gossip,” Annie said, kissing him on the ear. “Right then, let’s have a look.”

  I pulled out the diary and my laptop, ready to take notes, and watched as Hugh and Annie bent their heads over the precious book. Annie ran one hand through the gray streak at the front of her hair, and Hugh bit at one fingernail, but they were both quiet, reading intently for several minutes. At one point, Annie raised her eyebrows, and Hugh muttered “Well, now!”

  Finally, Gareth broke the silence by clearing his throat.

  Both Hugh and Annie looked up, startled. Annie’s eyes were shining, teary.

  “So,” Gareth said, his voice sounding falsely casual. “What’s in there?”

  Annie blinked a few times and said, “I don’t know how to prepare you. I—” She carefully turned the pages back to the beginning of the little diary. I felt my stomach lurch.

  “Just a sec now,” Hugh said, getting up from the table with a determined expression. I exchanged a confused look with Gareth, and then Hugh came back with a paper plate of incredibly greasy French fries. I felt a momentary pang. Next week I’d be home in San Francisco, sitting with Rae in our favorite taqueria, telling her all about this.

  It still seemed far away.

  Annie said “Ready?” and I brought my attention back to the present. To the past.

  “Right. Well … this part here, this first entry, it starts with ‘More evacuees came to our school this week. It makes me so sad and angry that I’d like to march on over to Germany myself. I really mean it. Mam and Dad would—er, ‘gwylltio’n gacwn’ doesn’t quite translate literally, but it’s a bit like ‘get angry as a wasp’ … ”

  I typed until my hands got tired, and then Annie took over for a while, until we had the translation of every entry in the brief diary. By the time we were finished, there were almost fifteen pages of notes, and by then an early dinner crowd of backpacking students had wandered in and filled the place with chatter in various European languages.

  What we found in the diary had made my head spin.

  “The entries are so sporadic,” Annie said, “but you can just piece together what happened. Jiw, jiw.” Goodness gracious.

  “And it isn’t a nice story,” Hugh added, sounding apologetic.

  At first, it wasn’t so bad. There were excited entries telling of Rhiannon’s trysts with Edward—Gareth’s great-granddad—which were kind of a shock but made me smile at the same time, picturing Gee Gee as a rebellious teenager: Mam has punished me again for seeing Edward. I’m to stay in my room all day knitting army socks. It’s truly unfair. I can’t understand why everybody says he’s a shady one, not to be trusted. When he smiles at me I know it isn’t true. With that sandy-colored wavy hair just sliding down over one eye, I want to brush it aside, to touch his face … and to tell the truth I often do! That, and more …

  I looked at Gareth and saw that same lock of hair that just wouldn’t stay in place. That floppy hair that, on a much younger Edward, had made Rhiannon swoon. I fidgeted in my chair, not sure what to think. Trying not to freak out at how similar things were.

  But they were different, too. Of course they were.

  I’m so happy my Edward is too young to be called away to fight. Just a year off, really, he could go if he wanted, but I think he worries about his mam being alone. He hasn’t said so, and that spiteful Mrs. Lloyd with her horrible overpriced yarn called him a dodger, which Dad says is worse than a conscientious objector like Uncle Rhodri.

  I could hardly bear to listen when Hugh read the descriptions of how Gee Gee had been ostracized by the community for having an illegitimate child with an English boy. She endured spiteful comments from the villagers and got the silent treatment from her parents: I can scarcely believe that people I’ve known my entire life, perfectly decent people, could be so nasty. They gave me looks when I was seeing Edward, but now … they just turn up their noses or say “I knew it would happen.”

  Then there were the dreams. I trembled, reeling with a sense of overwhelming recognition as I read over some of the passages: I had another dream last night, the ones Mam-gu Davies says I have to listen to. It was just images flashing by, some men working in a coal mine, and then the cromlech over by the old Llanddewi chapel, all fenced off. I can’t understand it.

  I felt like the world was tilting, like I might fall out of my chair. It was overwhelmingly sad; all the more so because we couldn’t fix what had already happened. I wasn’t even sure we’d be able to deal with what was happening now. Gareth looked uncomfortable, pushing his glasses back up his nose, but at some point, he had put his hand on top of mine and I didn’t pull away.

  The most painful parts to hear were about Olwen—her lovely fragility, her chronic illness, the way she and Rhiannon depended on one another after Edward left for the mines … and after Edward’s letters stopped … and the way both of them depended on Great-Grandpa John. I don’t know if I love him yet. But I know I made the right decision for Olwen. And John was lonely. He and Olwen can help each other. As for me … we’ll see. I can think about Edward now without the same pain that it used to cause. I loved him, but I’ve moved on. As Annie read out the translation, I saw Gareth’s eyes darken, his expression unreadable. And no wonder—he was the first to actually see Olwen, down in the cromlech.

  In a way, this part of the diary felt the most important. Because of Olwen, Gareth and I were sort of related, in a way—a bizarre thought. And somehow we’d found each other online. Again, somehow because of Olwen. If Gareth hadn’t seen her apparition, he wouldn’t have been prompted to do a search for Olwen Nia Evans. And if he hadn’t done that, he wouldn’t have found me.

  I shivered. She was our connection. But she’d been gone for so, so long.

  I feel as if I’ve lost everything, the final diary entry said, after Olwen had fallen ill and died; after all the heart-wrenching words about Olwen’s coughing and Rhiannon’s exhaustion, caring for her daughter first alone and then with Great-Grandpa John, who had married Rhiannon and loved Olwen as his own. Edward was still away at the mines, for work, and hadn’t returned.

  … nobody would give me any help. I feel so completely alone. “Should have known better,” said awful Mrs. Lloyd. “Now you’ve got to live with your troubles, dear. We all have them. Some worse than others, I suppose.” I should never have spoken to her. I’m sure she’s the cow that has told everyone terrible lies about me and Edward.

  Now I could understand why Gee Gee left for the United States and hardly looked back. I could guess why Olwen was haunting us, and why she was so lonely. It was clear why Gee Gee had wanted to return here at the end of her life, despite it all.

  But it was obvious that Gee Gee’s return alone hadn’t been enough. Not enough to set Olwen to rest, nor enough to bring the whole story to light.

  We needed both sides of the story.

  That, we’d have to do on our own. I couldn’t ask more of Hugh and Annie, who had given so much help today on short notice.

  “Thank you for sharing this with us,” Annie said, putting

  a gentle hand on my arm before getting up. “It’s truly an amazing piece of history.”

  “We won’t breathe a word to your parents until you say so. Good luck to you both,” Hugh said, flashing us a smile over his shoulder on the way to the door.

  I exchanged a long look with Gareth as Hugh and Annie bustled out into the crisp air. He looked as ill as I felt, but there was no other choice, no reason anymore for avoiding it. My stomach roiled, making me sorry I’d eaten the oily fries.

  The next step was to confront Gareth’s great-gr
anddad.

  24

  Haws dywedyd mynydd na myned drosto.

  It is easier to say mountain than to climb it.

  Welsh proverb

  Cwm Road was busy with foot traffic as Gareth and Wyn walked to his great-granddad’s house. Busy and normal, with normal people and their everyday problems. Meanwhile, Gareth’s hair was hopelessly windblown, his clothes smelled like fried cod, and his brain was utterly devoid of coherent thought. But there was nothing else for it; Wyn was going home in a matter of days, and he couldn’t leave things the way they were—couldn’t spend his life getting phone-stalked by the ghost of a six-year-old, couldn’t keep being distracted by thoughts of Olwen, whom he somehow had to help. Both Olwens. It was like someone had gone into his mind, headed straight for the logical and orderly part, and kicked it about until only a shambles was left. An utterly disorganized shambles. He booted a stray paper cup into the street.

  He’d been going along with things here in Cwm Tawel a step at a time, hoping with each step that the situation would improve. It was hard to imagine that anything good could come out of a confrontation with his great-granddad. But now that they’d translated Rhiannon’s diary, they didn’t have much choice. That was their next step.

  The diary. Gareth walked a little faster. It was all so difficult for his brain to encompass. The same great-granddad who used to tickle him until he hyperventilated, who kept his tiny garden neat to the point of obsessiveness but couldn’t keep his house organized, who took Gareth and Tommy to the Natural History Museum whenever he visited them in London—he was just a normal great-granddad, yet somehow, he was also the same person who’d seduced Rhiannon with his smile, who’d left her with an illegitimate baby, who’d gone off to be a miner and didn’t come back for years. The same great-granddad who’d been so distant throughout this whole visit, even the funeral.