The Earth Hums in B Flat

by Mari Strachan

  I can see Angharad and Catrin sitting on the window-seat in the parlour just the way they were when I first saw them this morning. But now they’re not reading the book that’s open on their laps.

  ‘I’m going home,’ I say. ‘Goodbye, you two.’

  Catrin slithers down from the window-seat and runs into the hall and holds me round my legs. ‘Don’t go, Gwenni, please don’t go,’ she says.

  ‘Catrin,’ says Mrs Evans. ‘Let go of Gwenni. Now, Catrin.’

  ‘I have to go, Catrin,’ I say. ‘Mam will be cross with me if I’m late for dinner.’

  Catrin steps back. ‘Is your mam always cross?’ she asks. ‘Tada’s always cross. He was very cross this morning.’

  ‘Catrin,’ says Mrs. Evans from behind her white handkerchief. ‘Come on, girls. Say goodbye.’

  I hurry through the door with my parcel of books. I don’t have to go past Mot or the hissing geese on the way home. I turn and wave at the girls before I round the corner to the path. ‘See you tomorrow,’ I shout. The string loop is already cutting into my fingers so I lift the parcel up under my arm and run as fast as I can with it across the first field and over the stile into the next one. And I don’t look left or right or back again until I reach the gate into the road in case I see Ifan Evans and his big black dog.

  I race down the hill past Penrhiw and don’t look at the Reservoir or the Baptism Pool. Then I put down the parcel and pick Mam a bunch of primroses with leaves that are furry as John Morris’s ears and try not to think about having Jones the Butcher’s faggots for dinner when I get home.

  6

  In the living room the curtains are closed to keep us hidden from the world. They overlap where they meet so that not even the daylight can peek at us. The wind whines in the chimney and makes the fire slow to draw and we can’t boil the kettle to make a pot of tea yet. Smoke gusts down into the room and swirls up past the mantelpiece and around the Toby jugs on their high shelf. They look as if they’re puffing hard on their pipes as they watch Mam.

  ‘Pull,’ says Mam. ‘Come on. Pull.’

  Bethan holds the hooks’ edge of the new pink corset wrapped around Mam and I hold the eyes’ edge, and we pull and pull to make the hooks meet the eyes. But there’s a big gap no matter how hard we pull. A big gap full of trembly flesh. I try not to touch it.

  ‘It’s too small, Mam,’ says Bethan.

  ‘It can’t be,’ says Mam. ‘It’s exactly the same size as my old one.’

  ‘Can’t you wear the old one?’ I ask.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Gwenni,’ says Mam. ‘I can’t get into my blue costume in the old one.’

  ‘You don’t have to wear the blue costume,’ says Bethan.

  ‘I always wear my blue costume on Easter Sunday,’ says Mam. ‘And I’ve got that new half hat that Siân helped me choose. She said the blue feathers are a perfect match for my eyes.’ She snatches the corset from us and starts to fasten up the hooks and eyes. Her hands shake but when I try to help her she slaps my hand away. On the mantelpiece the Toby jugs narrow their eyes as Mam’s blue satin dressing gown slithers open and closed around her. They puff and puff at their pipes.

  ‘Right,’ says Mam, and she steps into the corset. ‘Let’s try pulling it up instead of around.’

  Bethan and I take hold of the top of the corset each side of Mam. The blue satin dressing gown slides over me. I hold my breath as long as I can in case Evening in Paris makes my head throb. The corset is much narrower than Mam. Bethan and I tug and tug and the corset creeps up over Mam’s belly. I close my eyes so that I don’t see the bulges.

  ‘Don’t pull faces, Gwenni,’ says Mam. ‘Keep pulling.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can breathe in it, Mam,’ says Bethan.

  ‘Never mind breathing,’ says Mam. ‘I have to get into that blue costume for Chapel.’

  ‘Can we stop for a minute?’ says Bethan. ‘I’m getting boiling hot.’

  Mam pulls her dressing gown around her. ‘Gwenni,’ she says, ‘close the damper and put the kettle on. We’ll see if the fire’s hot enough to boil it now.’

  I place the kettle on the logs. A flame flares up and I jerk my hand away. Bethan pulls out yesterday’s Daily Herald from under the cushion on Tada’s chair, tumbling John Morris from his sleep, and fans herself with it. John Morris curls up tighter against the breeze she makes.

  ‘Why don’t you get changed upstairs?’ Bethan asks Mam.

  ‘Your father’s there,’ says Mam. ‘Stop waving the paper about. Let’s try this corset again. Pass me that powder.’

  Mam sprinkles the talcum powder on her skin above the corset until it mists the air. John Morris and I sneeze at the same time.

  ‘Come on,’ Mam says. ‘It won’t take much longer now. It’ll slide easily over the talc.’

  ‘Mam,’ I say as Bethan and I heave on the corset. ‘You know what I said last night about Mrs Evans wanting me to look after Angharad and Catrin after school? Can I do it? Mrs Evans said she’d pay me.’

  ‘Teacher’s pet,’ says Bethan. ‘Did you see all the books she gave her, Mam?’

  ‘Can I, Mam?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ says Mam. ‘Better than sitting about here with your beak in a book.’ She pants as the corset inches up, squashing her stomach upwards above it. ‘And have you put all those books out of the way?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. The cardboard box under the bed has the six books and two exercise books in it, my School Friend comics, the detective stories Aunty Lol lends me, the Famous Five books I have for Christmas every year from Aunty Siân, a list of favourite words from the dictionary at school, and my three autograph books, a blue one, a green one and a red one. Every time someone gives me a new autograph book Mam chooses a blue page and writes the same verse in it:

  Be good, sweet maid,

  And let who will be clever,

  For after all that’s said and done,

  The good will live forever.

  Tada always draws the family face with the family nose, the family hair done in red pencil and the family freckles done in brown. It looks like me. I used to have a diary in a red Lion exercise book in the box with PRIVATE written on the front underneath the lion’s head. When she read it Mam said: There are no secrets in this house, Gwenni.

  ‘Concentrate, Gwenni,’ says Mam. ‘You’re not pulling hard enough.’

  ‘I’ve got to stop for a minute,’ says Bethan. ‘Look at my fingers. They’ve gone all white. I can’t feel them.’

  She waves her hands at me and Mam. The corset is only just over Mam’s belly button and the rest of her wobbles like a strawberry blancmange above it. I try not to look at the blancmange. But the Toby jugs are looking; they’ve stopped smoking their pipes and their fat cheeks are a fiery red.

  The mantelpiece clock tick-tocks and Mam breathes along with it in little gasps. Her face is cross and crinkly underneath her yellow pincurls. She didn’t have her beauty sleep last night; I had a bad dream and woke her up. For a moment we all three stand motionless. When the latch on the back door rattles it makes us all jump.

  ‘Yoo-hoo,’ calls Nain from the scullery.

  ‘Quick,’ says Mam. ‘Where’s my sash gone?’ Her blue satin dressing gown slips around her as she catches hold of the sash and ties it round her vanished waist.

  Nain comes through the scullery door and peers into the room; she hasn’t got her spectacles on her family nose. ‘Why is it so dark in here?’ she asks. ‘And what’s that sickly smell?’ She’s in her old tartan dressing gown and her hair hangs over her shoulder in a grey plait that gets thinner and thinner on its way down.

  ‘Magda,’ she says to Mam. ‘I came round straight away, as soon as Nellie next door told me. I couldn’t let you go to Chapel knowing nothing about it. Poor Guto’s been flapping about all over town like an old crow, in a panic about it. Nellie says the news is spreading like spilt milk. Everyone’ll have heard.’

  She looks at the three of us as we stare at he
r. ‘I saw something in the tea leaves yesterday, but I couldn’t read it,’ she says. ‘Well, who could?’ She squints at Mam. ‘Are you all right?’ she asks. ‘What’s happened to you?’

  ‘Never mind Mam, Nain,’ says Bethan. ‘What did you come to tell us?’

  Nain ignores Bethan. ‘It’s Ifan Evans, Magda,’ she says. ‘He’s run off.’

  ‘Run off?’ says Mam, pulling her dressing gown sash tighter around her. ‘What do you mean, run off?’

  ‘Run off,’ says Nain again. ‘What do you think I mean? Run off and no one knows where he is. Elin won’t be in Chapel this morning, that’s for sure.’

  Mam is still panting from the tight corset. ‘But . . . who says he’s run off?’ she asks.

  ‘Nellie said he didn’t turn up for a meeting at the vestry with the minister yesterday evening, and when the minister went all the way to Brwyn Coch to see him, Elin said he hadn’t been home since breakfast,’ says Nain. ‘Not for his dinner or his tea. She didn’t know where he was. And he left Mot tied up all day – have you ever known him go anywhere except Chapel without that dog?’

  In my bad dream Mot barked and leapt on the end of his rope as the black dog galloped towards me across the field to Brwyn Coch and Ifan Evans laughed and laughed, his face as red as the Toby jugs’ cheeks. Just before the black dog reached me I screamed and woke up. That was when Mam banged on the wall and shouted: Be quiet, Gwenni; I must have my beauty sleep.

  ‘But he’s a deacon,’ says Mam to Nain.

  ‘He’s a man, Magda,’ says Nain. ‘Don’t know when they’re well off, men. Look at Ifan; nice wife, educated but knows her place, a house like a pin in paper always, beautiful children. And he runs off.’ She raises her eyebrows and shrugs. Her grey plait shifts off her shoulder. When it hangs straight down her back it reaches almost to her knees.

  Bethan makes faces at me and mouths, ‘Good riddance.’

  Nain looks at us. ‘What are you two doing standing there with your ears flapping?’ she says. ‘Go and make the tea, that kettle’s boiling its lid off.’

  I go into the scullery, past all the faces in the distemper. They’re not watching me this morning. They’ve closed their eyes and grown long ears so that they can listen to Nain. I pick up the tea tray and take it through into the living room.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ says Mam. ‘Not Ifan. Oh . . . oh,’ she clutches her face in both hands. ‘What if he’s had an accident?’

  I put two scoops of tea in the brown teapot and Bethan lifts the kettle from the fire and pours the boiling water onto the tea leaves. The water burbles like the stream at Brwyn Coch racing down to the Reservoir. Don’t think about the Reservoir.

  ‘They’ve had the men out looking,’ says Nain. ‘No. He’s gone. Always had a roving eye, that Ifan. So they say.’

  I stir the tea round and round and Bethan puts the kettle back in the grate quietly.

  ‘I hope you didn’t get soot on your clothes, Bethan,’ says Nain. ‘Terrible thing to get off, soot.’

  Mam’s face is as white as her talcum powder. ‘No. No,’ she says. ‘Don’t say that. He’s a real gentleman.’

  Bethan makes a throwing-up face at me.

  ‘What?’ says Nain. ‘Not what I’d call him, though I’ve never had much to do with him, myself. I hear he can be a charmer when he isn’t in one of his moods.’

  ‘Moods?’ says Mam. ‘Ifan?’

  ‘Very moody, apparently,’ says Nain. ‘But there, the girls would have liked that when he was young. And he was a bit of a piece when he was younger with that fair hair and those dark eyes; oh, yes, quite a good-looker. Turned many a girl’s head; and not only before he married Elin, either. So I’m told.’

  The wind howls in the chimney and a puff of smoke floats into the room and curls up around the Toby jugs.

  ‘This weather,’ says Nain. ‘Though it hasn’t snowed again, thank goodness. Dress up warmly for Chapel. You know how mean Mrs Davies Chapel House is with the heating.’

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Nain?’ I ask.

  ‘No time, Gwenni,’ she says. ‘Have to get on before your Aunty Lol gets up. That great horse of a girl just gets in my way.’ She turns for the scullery door and on her way she says, ‘Let me know if you hear anything more about it this morning, Magda.’ The back door slams shut behind her as the wind catches it and in the silence that follows I hear the scullery tap that Tada mended for the fourth time yesterday begin to drip-drip again.

  Mam is staring into the fire, standing still the way Mrs Evans did when she stared out of the window at Brwyn Coch. Thinking.

  I put milk into three of the teacups and Bethan lifts the pot to pour the tea. ‘Does that mean Ifan Evans has run off with another woman?’ she says.

  ‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ says Mam. ‘He’s a married man.’

  ‘That’s what Nain said,’ says Bethan.

  ‘No, she didn’t,’ says Mam. ‘Gwenni, do you know anything about this?’

  ‘Me?’ I say.

  ‘When you were there yesterday,’ says Mam, ‘did you see Mr Evans?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I took Angharad and Catrin out to play and I helped Mrs Evans because she was in a lot of pain after Mr Price. Like you were, Mam, and she bled a lot, too. It was all over the floor.’ I have that old family stomach as I remember it.

  ‘Don’t talk to anyone about it,’ says Mam.

  ‘Except me,’ says Bethan.

  ‘About what?’ I ask Mam.

  ‘Yesterday,’ she says. ‘Gossip is nasty.’

  Mam unties her blue satin sash. ‘Let’s get this corset off,’ she says. ‘It’s making me feel quite sick pressing into my stomach. I’ll wear the old one. And my winter costume.’

  Bethan helps her pull the corset down. It comes off more easily than it went on. The talcum powder flakes away onto the linoleum like snow.

  ‘If you’re not wearing your blue costume, can I wear your new half hat?’ asks Bethan.

  Mam doesn’t answer.

  7

  We slide into our pew in Chapel just as Mrs Morris squeezes the last notes of her repertoire from the organ. That’s what Mrs Morris calls it: My repertoire. The organ is old as sin and some of the notes are silent.

  Mam sits in the middle between me and Bethan. She always sits in the middle. I shuffle closer to the door so that I don’t have to breathe in so much Evening in Paris. Mam leans her head on her hand to pray. Whenever I ask her what she prays for she says: That’s private, Gwenni. She prays for a long time this morning. There are still flakes of talcum powder on the back of her hand.

  Nain was right. Mrs Evans and Angharad and Catrin are not in their pew behind the organ. And Ifan Evans is not in the Big Seat under the pulpit. All the other deacons are there in their black suits, looking like a row of old crows from the castle, and so is Alwenna’s father, the song-raiser, who is allowed to sit there even though he’s not a deacon.

  A soft, red velvet cushion runs all along the Big Seat. But the deacons still fidget. Mr Morris turns to look at his wife, who ignores him, and Mr Pugh runs his finger around inside his collar again and again. Jones the Butcher has his arm along the back of the seat behind Young Mr Ellis and his meaty fingers tap on the polished wood. Young Mr Ellis looks at the ceiling. Alwenna’s father flips through the pages of his hymn book and Twm Edwards whispers into the Voice of God’s ear. The Voice of God looks up and nods at Alwenna’s father.

  I shift round in my seat to see if Alwenna is in her family’s pew at the back of the Chapel, but Mam prods me with her elbow and I have to turn back and look to the front. Mrs Llywelyn Pugh sits two pews forward of us with her dead fox around her shoulders. I try not to look at the dead fox.

  Alwenna’s father clears his throat and says, ‘Hymn two hundred and thirteen.’

  Mrs Morris begins to wheeze the tune out of the organ and I find that I’ve forgotten my hymn book and have to share Mam’s. But I can’t read the words because Mam’s hand is shaking and the print
jiggles about on the page. I pretend to sing. The congregation’s song rises up to the Chapel ceiling and I hear Alwenna’s voice soar above everyone else’s. If her voice were to carry on through the Chapel roof and up, up into the sky it would melt into the Earth’s song and all the people in the whole world would think there was a choir of angels in the sky and be filled with wonder like the shepherds when Jesus Christ was born.

  Everyone sits down after the hymn and the Voice of God half chants a long prayer. I listen to every word but he doesn’t mention Mrs Evans or Angharad or Catrin. Or Ifan Evans. I’ve already forgotten what he did mention. Alwenna’s father raises another hymn and as the congregation sits down again after singing, the Voice of God ascends the pulpit steps.

  The whole Chapel begins to settle itself for the next half hour. The heaters stop rumbling and people cough and splutter and make themselves as comfortable as they can on the hard pew seats. Somebody passes wind and the sound echoes around the room and along the high gallery. Mam pretends not to notice but Bethan snorts as she tries not to laugh. I pull my handkerchief out of my coat pocket to hold over my nose. The three pennies for the collection that I’d wrapped in the handkerchief drop to the floor and clink past several pews. Mam clamps her hand tightly on mine. The Voice of God pauses for a second as he opens the pulpit gate and he looks down on the Big Seat and the empty space between Mr Pugh and Jones the Butcher where Ifan Evans should be. Mam’s hand starts shaking again and she lets go of me and leans back in the pew and her breath flutters as if she still has her new corset on.

  The Voice of God declares that his sermon is about the resurrection, the greatest miracle of all. Isn’t flying a great miracle? Or falling like Alice into Wonderland? Bethan begins to cough. Mam takes a packet of Polo mints from her pocket and gives one to Bethan. The silver paper rustles like a mouse in Mam’s shaky hand. A sweet mintiness mingles with the smell that’s always in Chapel, of mice and must and Mrs Davies Chapel House’s beeswax polish and mothballs from suit pockets and Evening in Paris.