The Red Judge

by Pauline Fisk

  In fact, I don’t think she even thought of us as children. We were friends, pure and simple, who saw her warts and all. Sometimes we’d bring her home from the bar of the Black Lion Hotel, too drunk to stand up straight and she didn’t care who saw it. And sometimes we’d nick her cigars from their supposed hiding place on the bookshelf behind My People by Caradoc Evans. She must have known what we were doing, but she never said a word.

  She took us poaching salmon with her too, sneaking out at night when no one was about. And she drove without a seat belt because she ‘couldna bear to be told what to do’. And it was nothing to find her in the garden on a hot summer’s day, not a stitch of clothing on, enjoying the sun and ‘damn the melanoma!’

  Grace’s life was lived in a state of perpetual defiance. I don’t think anything she did ever shocked us. If any of our Fitztalbot relatives had done the half of it, they’d have been carted off to the loony bin, but Grace had a way of getting away with things.

  She also had a way with words, and an imagination that was second to none. I remember nights under the stars with her – Cary and me huddled in sleeping bags while Grace told tall tales that she insisted were true. We’d look up towards Plynlimon, wondering if it really was a magic mountain like she said, full of secrets and strange powers. There were fairy folk in Grace’s tales, elven princes, angels and witches, devils to beware of and shape-shifting wizards whose faces changed from one day to the next.

  We knew every story by heart – but the only one she never told us was the one about our father. We knew he’d died in an accident, but had no idea what sort of man he’d been, or what our lives were like before he died, or why our mother never mentioned him. Even Cary couldn’t remember him, though she was older than me. It was as if she’d wiped him from her memory. She certainly never asked anything.

  But I did. ‘Do I look like him?’ I’d ask. ‘Do I act like him? Did he love me? Did he hold me as a baby? Why won’t our mother talk about him? Did he break her heart?’

  Perhaps the questions were the wrong ones – I don’t know. But I never got any answers that made sense. Sometimes, playing in St Curig’s churchyard, I’d think about his bones and wonder where they lay. Once I remember searching for his grave in the long grass, knowing that it had to be there somewhere. But I couldn’t find it, and neither could Grace when I frogmarched her out to look for it.

  ‘It’s all so overgrown these days,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, though – if we can’t find it now we’ll do it another day.’

  We never had done though, but now I had all the time in the world. I opened the gate and started up the path. Maybe my Fitztalbot father had brought me here to banish me, but what I felt was relief. I passed the FOR SALE sign, the builder’s board and the concrete mixer, and reached the porch, my heart bursting with an indescribable sense of excitement. It was almost as if, instead of being punished, I’d been set free.

  I stamped down the snow and forced open the front door. Inside everything had changed, but I couldn’t have cared less. I was just relieved to be back. All Grace’s furniture had gone, and so had the carpets on the floors. Walls had come down and rooms been knocked into each other. New floorboards had been laid and white paint slapped over everything.

  I walked through the whole house, room after room. In the kitchen, the slate floor had been replaced with ceramic tiles that would have looked all right in sunny Tuscany, but were completely out of place here in Prospect House. Even so, I didn’t care. I walked round the whole kitchen with its brand new appliances, knowing that Grace would have hated it, but all I could think was, I’m home. I’m back. It’s all right. I’m safe.

  Safe, but freezing cold. All the old fireplaces had been yanked out and replaced with radiators, and I couldn’t find the boiler, or work out how to switch them on. I couldn’t even work out how to switch on the lights, and in the end I gave up trying and went to bed.

  It was only early, but how else was I going to get warm? I shut my bedroom door, flung myself on to the bed – thanking God that it hadn’t been removed, like so much else – wrapped my old quilt round me and tried determinedly not to think.

  But this proved impossible. A jumble of images ran through my head, always starting and ending with Cary. And then I didn’t feel so carefree. For Cary was my flesh and blood – she was my family, and there was no way I could stay here pretending that everything was all right when I knew it wasn’t. Just because my father had banished me, that didn’t give me an excuse. I’d put my sister in the hospital, and it was my duty to return to her.

  ‘Tomorrow morning,’ I promised myself. ‘There’s nothing I can do now, but I’ll figure out some way of getting back to her first thing.’

  I tried to get to sleep, but the morning was hours away and anything could happen between now and then. I lay in bed, listening to a blizzard building up outside the window. Wind gusted down the valley, howling like the Cŵn y Wbir, and snow beat against the glass, piling up until I couldn’t see outside.

  The night felt neverending. I tried to comfort myself by picturing Cary here with me, just like the old days – picturing her being well again and it being summer, with a harvest moon outside the window, fox cubs playing in the newly cut meadow, and voices drifting down from the Black Lion Hotel – songs sung of fairy circles and old hymns of the bread of heaven.

  It was a comforting picture and finally it lulled me off to sleep. But in the morning it was still winter, and I was still alone. The view from my bedroom window was hidden by snow, and there was nothing to be heard outside but an echoing silence. I forced the window open and the view that greeted me was of a strange new world that I didn’t even know. It was as if the valley had blown away in the night and a new one had come in its place.

  I stared across it, trying to pick out landmarks – trees and walls and cottages that might give the landscape its recognisable shape. The Afon Gwy still glinted on its way down the valley, and St Curig’s church tower was its usual solid self, rising up behind the trees in Grace’s garden. But almost everything else I knew had disappeared. Half the trees had gone, and so had half the houses, hidden by snowdrifts.

  Even the huge old yew that marked the boundary of Grace’s garden had almost disappeared, hidden by a camouflage of snow. The churchyard behind it was one single carpet, all the gravestones buried. The meadow was a single carpet too, sparkling all the way down to the river. The fields beyond the river were sparkling, and the hills were sparkling too, folding in on each other all the way up the pass road.

  I looked at it all, and knew that there was no way I’d get back to Cary today. Nothing I did would get me out of here. Suddenly I felt afraid. I looked at the snow, and it seemed to me that it was winking like thousands of lights, right across the valley. Thousands of corph candles, burning for a death!

  What had happened in the night, while I was asleep? Was Cary all right? Had something terrible happened to her? I slammed the window shut and fled the room in search of a phone. But no sooner had I reached the stairs than I caught a glimpse of a light down in the hall. I couldn’t hear a sound, but I knew I wasn’t imagining it. Somebody was down there – and they were coming my way!

  I tore back into my bedroom, shut the door, pushed the bed in front of it and dived underneath, pulling the quilt over my head as if the black corph candle was in the house and I had just seen it. I knew that I was being crazy, because it wasn’t real, just something out of legend, but I actually felt as if it was coming to get me. The light grew under the door, and then I heard something as well. It sounded like paws padding on bare boards, and there was a snuffling noise too. It came along the landing, heading my way, and I drew back under the bed as far as I could get.

  Then I heard a panting noise outside the door and suddenly it wasn’t just corph candles that I had to worry about. It was the Cŵn y Wbir as well. The dreaded hounds of hell.

  No! I thought. It can’t be! But it seemed it could. Slowly the door began to open, forcing the bed back
against the wall, taking me with it. Then the room filled up with light and great grey shapes entered the room, their paws clacking towards me as if they could smell my fear.

  They knew exactly where to look for it. I went to pull the quilt over me but, before I could, they looked under the bed and our eyes met. Then a single light started coming towards me and a voice said, ‘What are you … doing down there … are you all … right are you … lost is something … wrong is that … really you Zed … is it you?’

  Had I been in less of a panic, I would have recognised that voice immediately. Only one person I knew had that broken way of speaking, cutting up his sentences into groups of three words at a time, interrupted by stops.

  But, by then, I was past recognising anything. I pulled the quilt right over my head, and it was only when a hand reached under the bed and pulled it off that I finally understood what was going on. A big face, framed by a squashy felt hat, loomed into view.

  ‘It’s you …’ I said, staring at my father’s younger brother – Pawl Pork-pie.

  7

  Pawl Pork-Pie

  My mother never had much time for Pawl. I asked her once if he and my father had been alike, and I’ll never forget the expression on her face, as if the idea was unthinkable.

  Apparently not, I thought, and never dared to ask again.

  I suppose he was an embarrassment to her – a big shambling man who couldn’t string his words together, tended to wear his clothes back to front and inside out, and often didn’t brush or wash his hair because he said it hurt his head. My mother was immaculate, and Pawl was a mess. She was sharp. He was slow. Her life was a matter of achievement, but his was a matter of simply being.

  He was confused, and there was nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t have told you which year it was, couldn’t recite the days of the week, and sometimes couldn’t even say what he’d done earlier in the day. How he’d got that way, I’d no idea. Perhaps he’d been born like that, or he’d had an accident or some terrible medical condition like a blood clot on the brain.

  I hardly ever thought about it. Pawl was Pawl, and that’s all there was to it, as far as I was concerned. I was sorry that my mother never invited him to Pengwern, but I didn’t lose much sleep about it because I knew he’d never have fitted in.

  Once I remember my mother and Grace having a terse conversation about what would become of Pawl when Grace died. It wasn’t that he was unable to look after himself, Grace had said, because he’d made himself a life. And he’d have the money that she left for him, of course, after the house was sold. But what really bothered her was the thought of him being left with nobody to call his own.

  ‘I’m talking about family,’ Grace had said, looking pointedly at my mother. ‘About a sense of belonging. I’m talking about giving Pawl time. That’s what he needs.’

  But, if this was a hint, my mother didn’t take it. ‘Pawl will be just fine,’ she said to us afterwards. ‘I mean, look at him. It’s not as if he’s lonely. He likes living on his own. Besides, he’s got the whole village for his family. Everybody looks out for him.’

  This was true. Everybody was Pawl’s friend, from Beryl Breadloaf at the shop to Old Pryce at the Black Lion Hotel. He cut the grass down at the school, and knew every child by name, turning up all year round for non-existent harvest festivals and Christmas carol services, always bringing gifts with him.

  Everybody loved Pawl, but nobody did as much as Grace, and now that she was gone he must be missing her dreadfully. Once not a day had passed without him calling in to help out with her gardening or do her odd jobs. In fact, I’d often wondered why he didn’t just move in.

  But even after Grace had gone, Pawl stayed where he was in his place down by the river, known to everybody as ‘the tin house’. He didn’t want to live in Prospect House, he said. He was happy with what he’d got. When it came to disposing of Grace’s possessions, all that he could be persuaded to take were his mother’s fishing rod, her high-backed red wicker sled and her dogs.

  It was those dogs that I was looking at now. Not the Cŵn y Wbir after all, but not exactly ordinary dogs either! Harri and Mari were the two strangest-looking creatures you could ever wish to see, born of some nameless mix of mongrels that had been in the family for generations. They were huge – as big as calves, Grace always used to say – and they had the wildest, shaggiest grey-brown coats that you ever saw, and eyes that seemed to say things when you looked at them.

  I’d known them all my life, and now I climbed out from under the bed, feeling pretty stupid, put my arms around them and greeted them like my long-lost brother and sister. In return they lay their huge paws on my shoulders and almost knocked me flat while Pawl stood watching, a smile on his face. I pulled myself away from them, and greeted him as well.

  ‘Good to see you,’ I said, beaming at him, weak with relief.

  He beamed back. ‘Good to see … you good to … have you here … again it’s like … the old days … don’t like change … I like things … better when they … stay the same.’

  This was a big speech for Pawl, who was a private man and didn’t give much away about his feelings. At Grace’s funeral he hadn’t shed a tear. The packed church had wept openly, but Pawl had sat upright, his face stiff beneath his pork-pie hat, his eyes completely dry.

  Even when our mother came down afterwards to sort out Prospect House, prior to the builders moving in, Pawl didn’t cry. And he certainly wasn’t crying now, but I wondered how often he let himself in like this, and wandered round the empty rooms in the early-morning light, telling himself that he liked things better when they stayed the same.

  I gave him a hug, and said I agreed. I wouldn’t have hugged my Fitztalbot uncles or aunts, and I certainly wouldn’t have hugged my father, but Pawl belonged to the old days when Grace had been my family and he had been a part of it. We went downstairs together, and he sorted out the electricity and heating by a mere flick of a switch, then went back to the tin house to fetch me some provisions.

  While he was away I looked for the phone, wanting to find out what was happening at the hospital. But I couldn’t see it anywhere, and Pawl didn’t seem to know where it was either, when he came back. I helped him unload the red wicker sled, which was weighed down with what looked like half his belongings. While I was upstairs making up a proper bed with a duvet, bed linen and pillows, Pawl cooked us both breakfast, his hat still on his head, a bin bag for an apron round his waist and an expression of pure contentment on his face.

  He sang as he cooked. You could hear him all over the house. I wished that I could be more like him – could take life as it came instead of always getting in such a state.

  ‘Once I get back to Pengwern,’ I promised myself, ‘I’m going to turn over a new leaf. I’m going to be nicer to everybody, especially my parents. I’m going to get a grip, and I’m going to work harder. I’ll straighten up in school, pass my exams and prove to the Fitztalbot family that Cary’s not the only one who’s got a brain.’

  Pawl called out that breakfast was ready. I hurried downstairs, and he might have trouble with his words, but it was obvious that Pawl could cook. I sat down before the perfect breakfast, especially for a boy who’d eaten almost nothing for the last two days. Bacon that was thick and crisp; sausages that were juicy without being fatty; scrambled eggs that were as light and soft as summer sunshine; toast that was as crumbly as if the bread had only just been baked; butter that tasted like home-whipped cream, and jam that smelt of early-morning dew in Grace’s strawberry patch.

  I ate it all, washed down with coffee that achieved the impossible and actually tasted as good as it smelt. The whole thing was astonishing. In all the years I’d been coming down to Wales, I’d never seen this side of Pawl before. You think you know people, but you don’t.

  He ate his breakfast too, beaming with pleasure as I heaped praise upon him. In between mouthfuls, he tried to tell me all the local gossip. But I couldn’t understand the half of it and,
besides, the combination of food and warmth was finally getting to me.

  My eyelids drooped and, in the end, I had to make my excuses and go up to bed. The house was warm now, and I was comfortable. Finally the trauma of the last few days was catching up with me. I closed my eyes and fell fast asleep.

  When I awoke, it was getting dark. I could smell more cooking coming from the kitchen, and went downstairs to discover that, flushed with his success, Pawl had gone berserk. Covering every available work-surface were racks of biscuits, sponge cakes, muffins, sausage rolls and mince pies. Some of them were burned, but some of them were fine. In the oven was a loaf of bread, and on the brand new hob sat a hotpot of what my grandmother always used to call ‘sweet mountain lamb’. Dishes were piled in the sink, and the dishwasher was full.

  The fridge was full as well, and so were all the cupboards. You’d have thought that I had come to stay for months. I swallowed hard. I’d never seen Pawl looking so pleased with himself. I wondered how I was ever going to explain to him about my need to return to Pengwern.

  Before I could explain anything, however, he took me by the arm and steered me down the hall to Grace’s parlour at the back of the house, telling me that I should go and sit with her and keep her company.

  ‘She waits for … you I’ll bring … you in some … tea and cakes,’ he said.

  His words went through me. Surely Pawl knew that Grace was dead? I wasn’t going to have to explain it to him, was I? Besides, the last thing I wanted was to enter Grace’s parlour and see it empty. It had always been her nest, full of bits and pieces that she’d gathered and brought home, knitting them together into a perfect whole. I hadn’t been able to face it after the funeral, and I hadn’t been able to face it later, when my mother went to sort it out.

  She’d gone sweeping in with determination, saying it was a dirty job but ‘had to be done’. Clouds of dust had been raised and boxes had been dispatched to the garage to either ‘deal with later’ or give away. But I had refused to touch a thing. I wouldn’t even enter the room.