The Earth Hums in B Flat

by Mari Strachan

  Tada stamps the linoleum. ‘Why can’t we go back to coal?’ he says.

  ‘Because wood is cheap and I have to save money somehow if I’m going to have a better house than this, with an electric cooker and a bathroom,’ says Mam.

  Tada sighs. I begin to roll up my sheet of paper.

  ‘Don’t do that, Gwenni,’ Tada says. ‘Let’s have a proper look.’

  He studies the tree Mrs Evans drew and then looks at my big sheet of paper. ‘You’ve got plenty of room on here to make the tree much bigger. You could make it taller if Nain could remember a bit further back.’ He reads the names Nain gave me again. ‘I can fill in some of these gaps,’ he says. ‘But I’m no good with dates.’ He stares at the list, lost in a place I can’t see. ‘The Chapel cemetery is the best place for the dates,’ he says. ‘Everyone’s buried there. And there’s that box of photographs on top of the wardrobe; I’ll get it down for you. You can match the faces to some of the names.’

  ‘That’s your family,’ I say. I look at Mam. She’s sitting in her chair again, her knitting still on her cushion. She’s watching the fire, her lips moving slightly as if she’s memorising a poem for school. I whisper in Tada’s ear, ‘What about Mam’s? Where are they all buried? Where are all their pictures?’

  ‘Not now, Gwenni,’ he murmurs. Then, in his cheerful voice, he says, ‘Look, you can leave some room at the bottom, too. Here, see? After your name and Bethan’s you can put the names of your husbands and your children in years to come.’

  ‘I’m not going to get married,’ I say. ‘I hate boys.’

  ‘I expect you’ll change your mind when you’re older, Gwenni,’ he says.

  But I won’t.

  Tada puts his hand on Mam’s shoulder when he passes her to slip back into his chair by the fire but she shrugs it off. The Daily Herald rustles as Tada picks it up from the floor. John Morris crawls from under the chair and strolls towards the scullery, his tail flicking from side to side. He’s having no peace tonight. Perhaps he’ll finish his fish head before I go through, then I won’t have to see its staring eyes.

  I pull out my pencil case from my satchel, and my long ruler, and begin to draw a tree the way Mrs Evans showed me. Maybe I will make it look a bit more like a real tree. It will have the past, the present and the future of our family on it. But will it ever have the whole story? Will it ever have all the secrets and all the truth?

  20

  ‘I’m glad I decided to wear my old costume again,’ says Mam. ‘There’s a chill in the air this morning.’ She squints at the cloudy sky, and says in English, ‘Don’t cast a clout until May is out.’ With both hands she pulls at the waves above her ears so that they’re below her blue felt hat with its silly speckled feather. ‘That’s better,’ she says. But it isn’t.

  I offer Mam the huge cake tin she made me carry from the house. The cakes for the Singing Festival have got pink icing and hundreds and thousands. The doctor’s tablets haven’t helped Mam to cook any better than deep breathing did. She ignores me.

  ‘Now, Bethan,’ she says. ‘When the charabanc comes I want you to sit in the front seat with Gwenni and keep an eye on her.’

  ‘What?’ says Bethan. ‘Why do I have to do that?’ She stamps her foot. ‘It’s not fair. I want to sit with Janet.’

  ‘And you,’ says Mam to me. ‘I don’t want any of your silly nonsense. Just you mind what you say to people.’

  I don’t say anything. The cake tin’s weight makes my arms ache; I shift it to a different position. We stand in silence at the foot of our hill. Mam smiles at nothing because she’s just taken her tablet and Bethan sulks because she has to sit with me in the charabanc. I want to sit with Alwenna. Will Alwenna want to sit with me? Or will she want to sit with Edwin the horse and Aneurin on the back seat?

  A rattling and screeching breaks the silence. The racket gradually grows louder until the charabanc lurches around the corner towards us. It doesn’t usually make so much noise. We step back out of its way.

  Mam turns to me and takes the cake tin. ‘I’ll be keeping my eye on you,’ she says.

  With a blare of its horn the charabanc stops next to us. Mam climbs the steps and then stops dead at the top. Through the windows Bethan and I can see that the charabanc is already full of people.

  ‘Hooray,’ says Bethan and she pushes past me and Mam and disappears into the smoke-filled back of the bus. I climb the steps and stand behind Mam.

  ‘Hurry up,’ says the driver to Mam.

  ‘Who are you?’ says Mam. ‘Where’s Wil? He always picks up here first.’

  ‘Broke his leg,’ says the driver. He pats tenderly at the quiff that vibrates on his head in time to the engine. ‘I’m Ned. Doing him a favour. Doing you a favour.’

  Mam looks down over the cake tin at his quiff and his bootlace tie. ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing? You look too young to be in charge of a charabanc,’ she says. ‘And where are we supposed to sit?’

  ‘Magda! Magda!’ Nanw Lipstick waves with her cigarette from halfway down the charabanc. ‘I’ve kept a seat for you here, Magda.’ She points at the seat next to hers. Even from here I can see the bright red stain of lipstick on her cigarette.

  Mam looks round. There is no other seat except one at the very front next to Deilwen. Her mother and father sit across the aisle in the other front seat. Mam’s mouth turns into a thin line when she notices Deilwen’s father. He’s not at home watching the football on Robin Williams’s television; Mam’ll be cross with Tada all over again. Deilwen’s mother leans across her husband. ‘Your little girl can sit next to Deilwen,’ she says. ‘We’ll look after her.’ Little girl?

  ‘Sit here, Gwenni,’ says Mam. She pulls me forward and pushes me into the seat next to Deilwen. ‘Behave yourself and don’t move from there,’ she says. Where would I go?

  Ned makes the engine grate and screech and Deilwen puts her hands over her ears. As the charabanc starts to move forward I turn and watch Mam stagger down the aisle and sit next to Nanw Lipstick. She sits right on the edge of the seat and sticks her nose into the air, holding on to the cake tin in her lap. I try to see if Alwenna is behind me somewhere but cigarette smoke is writhing around everyone in the back half of the bus and I can’t find her. She must be on the charabanc if her mother’s here. I turn to face the way we’re going again. The fabric on the seat feels rough under my thighs; it used to be soft as the down on a baby bird.

  Look at Deilwen’s mother and father watching me. Deilwen’s mother holds a handkerchief over her nose; it only just covers it. Deilwen smiles at me, then looks out through the window. Her nose is just like her mother’s. I hadn’t noticed that at Sunday School; it must be their family nose.

  Guto’r Wern usually sits in the front seat where Deilwen’s parents sit, with whoever is looking after him for the day. I wonder where he is; I didn’t see him when I looked round, and I can’t hear him. ‘Did you see Guto come on the charabanc at the bottom of your hill?’ I ask Deilwen.

  ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘he wanted to sit next to me and I screamed and screamed and Mami said it was a disgrace to let someone like that travel with us and in the end someone took him off and said they’d both go on the train.’ She shudders. ‘It was horrible.’

  ‘My father says there’s no harm in him,’ I say. ‘He’s innocent as a child.’

  The charabanc rattles along the road and the road follows the sea. Guto will be following the sea, too, on the train. He likes the sea. The water reflects the grey of the clouds this morning and merges with the sky on the horizon so that you can’t see where one ends and the other begins. The sea is slow, the shallow waves too lazy to carry their white frills to the shore. It isn’t like this at night, the sea. I could fly far away over this sea. Last night there were more eyes than ever watching from the sea. All the family eyes were there. Would they help me to fly away? Or would they keep me here, too? I can’t see any eyes in this placid sea.

  ‘Guto can fly,’ I say to Deilwen. �
�And I can fly in my sleep. I fly right to the edge of the sea.’

  ‘People can’t fly,’ says Deilwen. ‘That’s going against the laws of God.’

  I haven’t found anything in Matthew that says animals haven’t got spirits, and I haven’t read anything that says people can’t fly. If it doesn’t say people can’t, does that mean they can?

  ‘I don’t think it is,’ I say. ‘Sometimes I can almost fly when I’m awake. Almost. Guto tried to teach me but it didn’t work.’ Mam is too far away to hear me. ‘I can remember flying when I was little.’

  Deilwen moves nearer the window. I don’t want her to be my friend. But I don’t know what Mam will say.

  I turn around again to see if I can spot Alwenna and there she is in a gap in the smoke, right at the back on the long seat, laughing with Aneurin and Edwin. I need to talk to her before the charabanc reaches Bermo about my plot for rescuing the dead fox and freeing its spirit. There won’t be time once we’re at the Festival.

  The charabanc bumps and sways as Ned fights with the levers and the steering wheel, and the smell of petrol fumes mixes with the cigarette smoke. When I was little, I used to be sick before the charabanc reached Dyffryn.

  I get up and begin to walk towards the back of the bus. Alwenna sees me; she waves and then turns her face away from me as if she’s made a mistake. As I pass Mam, she grabs hold of my arm. ‘What did I tell you?’ she says. ‘Get back to your seat. Don’t show me up.’ I forgot I had to stay in my seat.

  My arm throbs where Mam dug her fingertips into it. I sit back down next to Deilwen. I’ll have to rescue the dead fox on my own. I can do that. But the only time I can do it is when we have our lunch in the vestry of Bethania Chapel in Bermo. Then I’ll have to hide the fox, but where? Where?

  I hear Alwenna laughing at the back of the bus. Her laugh is like her song. It peals like a bell above the noise of the engine and the chatter of the people. Deilwen’s mother tightens her lips and turns to Deilwen’s father and shakes her head.

  Deilwen won’t sit still on her seat next to me. She bumps me with her elbow. Mam would tell me off if it was me.

  ‘Mami, Mami,’ she wails. I look at her. Whatever is the matter with her?

  Her mother looks at her, too. ‘Stop the bus,’ she shouts at Ned, rapping him on the head with her handbag and spoiling his quiff.

  The charabanc screeches and squeals. It begins to slow down. But it’s too late. Just as the charabanc stops, Deilwen throws up. I watch the vomit sliding down my legs and into the tops of my socks and slithering over my sandals that Tada polished this morning until they shone like conkers. The vomit is warm and smells of porridge. I try not to breathe and close my eyes tight so I don’t see it.

  ‘Get out,’ says Ned. ‘You can’t stay on my charabanc in that state.’

  ‘What have you done now, Gwenni?’ says Mam’s voice from above me.

  And Deilwen’s mother says, ‘Never mind, your mam can buy you a new pair of socks when we get to Bermo.’

  21

  We all bundle in through Bethania’s vestry doors, the boys at the front and girls behind them. We’re starving hungry after singing all morning. My stomach is quite hollow. Young Mr Ellis in his chapel suit is trying to keep us quiet and form us into a tidy line but no one takes any notice of him. His spectacles have slipped down to the tip of his nose and he’s carried through the door and down the corridor on a tide of hungry boys as relentless as my night-time sea.

  The sun came out while we were in Chapel and this vestry is hot and smells of sandwiches and cake and sweat and dust. But it’s lucky it’s hot; Mrs Llywelyn Pugh will have to take off her dead fox and leave it somewhere.

  Mrs Sergeant Jones and Mrs Jones the Butcher left the Singing Festival early to prepare the food. Mrs Jones the Butcher stands in the doorway to the room where we eat every year. Her arms are folded underneath her huge bosom. The surge of boys stops dead and Young Mr Ellis is catapulted forward. He pushes his spectacles up his nose with his little finger but they slide down again in an instant. I’m too far away to see if his little fingernail is dirty today.

  ‘Mr Ellis.’ Mrs Jones the Butcher has a huge voice, too. ‘Why are you allowing these children to run in?’ She spreads her arms out to stop any of us going past. Her bosom drops to her waist and the boys begin to snigger.

  Young Mr Ellis looks back at us. His face is red, and shiny with sweat. He pushes his spectacles up his nose again. He ducks under one of her outstretched arms and stands behind her and whispers something into her ear.

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ she says, and she looks at us until we fall silent. ‘Boys to that table, girls over there. That way we’ll have no trouble,’ she says, pushing the boys one after another in the right direction. We girls scuttle to our own table. I look around for Mrs Llywelyn Pugh but I can’t see her. She didn’t come on the charabanc like everyone else with their food plates and tins and boxes on their laps; she and her dead-mouse sandwiches were to come with Mr Pugh in his car.

  The trestle table is laid with a white cloth and its stiff edges scratch my legs as I slide onto the bench.

  ‘I hope there aren’t any splinters in these to ladder my stockings,’ says Alwenna as she slithers in next to me. Her new green skirt takes up enough room for two people. I try to squash it down where it billows over my leg but the net underneath it won’t flatten. ‘Did your mam have to get you some new socks, then?’ she says.

  I stick my legs out under the table for her to see. Mam will be cross for a long time about having to spend the new-house money on socks. And I can still smell porridge. I swing my legs back under the bench and try not to think about it.

  ‘My mam says your mam should have paid for Gwenni’s new socks,’ says Alwenna to Deilwen at the end of the table. Deilwen takes no notice of her. ‘Airs and graces,’ says Alwenna, and she pushes up the tip of her nose. ‘My mam’s cousin down south knows her mam’s cousin,’ she says to me. ‘She’s airs and graces too. She went to work in a posh house in London, only as a maid, mind, and when she came home for the weekend six months later she’d forgotten how to speak Welsh. That’s more airs and graces than your mam.’

  Is Mam airs and graces? Is that what the matter is with her?

  ‘Grace,’ shouts Mrs Twm Edwards and I fold my hands together and bow my head like everyone else and Young Mr Ellis mutters something very quick and then we start on the sandwiches.

  There are plates and plates of minced-mouse sandwiches with black crusts; the sight of them makes my stomach lurch and I try to hold my breath in case I breathe in a mouse spirit. There are some plates of egg sandwiches, too; if they’re Mrs Edwards the Bank’s egg sandwiches they won’t make my old family stomach worse.

  As I munch, I look around and there is Mrs Llywelyn Pugh sitting at the head of the table where the women are eating their dinner. I can’t see her eating any of her minced-mouse sandwiches. But she’s not wearing her dead fox. Where has she left it? I can’t see it anywhere.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ says Alwenna. ‘Have you been listening to me?’

  I haven’t but I don’t say so.

  ‘Elin Evans,’ she says. ‘All that stuff about her and Paleface. D’you know about it?’

  I don’t know what she’s talking about.

  ‘Wake up, Gwenni,’ she says. She leans towards me and breathes out the smell of minced mouse into my face. I hold my breath. ‘All that stuff about him beating her. And . . .’ She looks around and begins to whisper. ‘Those babies’ grave in our cemetery. He killed them. Everyone knows.’

  If everyone knows, why is she whispering? Anyway, what babies’ grave? Is this the grave Miss Owen Penllech was talking about? Is this a Nanw Lipstick half-a-story?

  ‘You’re hopeless, Gwenni,’ says Alwenna. ‘Don’t you know anything?’

  Mrs Twm Edwards comes over to our table and starts handing out the jellies. The glass dishes clatter on the tray and the red jelly shimmers inside them. If I were a criminal
I would steal priceless jewels that looked like that jelly. Mrs Morris follows Mrs Twm Edwards to hand out the fluted spoons she brings with her every year. The silvery surface of the spoons has rubbed away in places and the yellow metal underneath gives the jelly a bitter tang.

  How will I find the dead fox? I’m sure it’s not in this room. Maybe Mrs Llywelyn Pugh took her sandwich tins into the kitchen and left the dead fox in there. I swallow some jelly, cool and slippery in my throat, and try not to notice the tang. I’ll have to search for the fox.

  I cross my fingers. ‘I’m going to be sick,’ I say to Mrs Twm Edwards.

  ‘You’d better go and tell your mam,’ she says, and backs away. ‘She’ll know what to do.’

  ‘I thought you were being odder than usual,’ says Alwenna. ‘Can I have your jelly?’

  ‘No,’ I say, and I slip from the bench and bump my shin on its hard edge.

  Alwenna shrugs. ‘You won’t want it,’ she says and takes the glass dish with the rest of my jelly and begins to eat it.

  I rub my shin and limp past the men’s table, which has a pall of smoke hanging above it although there are only five of them sitting there. All the rest are at home listening to the Cup Final on the wireless or squeezed into Mrs Robin Williams’s parlour to watch it in a world where it’s always snowing. Guto isn’t here with the men. But I saw him at the Festival, singing and laughing. Did Mrs Beynon say it’s a disgrace to let him eat with us, too? Poor Guto.

  The women’s table is crowded and they’re laughing and talking and eating all at the same time the way I’m told off for doing. I hear someone mention Mrs Evans but I don’t hear what they say about her. I try to make myself invisible to walk past.

  ‘Gwenni,’ says Mam. ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘I feel ill,’ I say and rub my stomach.