The Earth Hums in B Flat

by Mari Strachan

  ‘It’s not much good, is it?’ says Richard. ‘The town library. We’ve got more books at home.’

  We haven’t. Tada’s got a book called Teach Yourself Bricklaying under his chair cushion that Mam got for him so he could learn to build with bricks as well as stones and earn more money. And Mam’s got a cookery book she never uses, and Mam and Bethan and I have a Bible and a hymn book each. I’ve got more books in the box under my bed than everyone else in our house put together. But I don’t tell Richard. His family must have hundreds of books, like Mrs Evans. I wonder if their shelves sag under the weight.

  From the distance comes Nain’s voice, still calling. ‘Lloyd George. Lloyd George.’

  Richard looks at me with his eyebrows raised.

  ‘That’s Nain, my grandmother,’ I say. ‘She left the window open. Aunty Lol will be sad if she comes home to find Lloyd George has flown away and we haven’t found him.’

  Richard picks up a stick and begins to rattle the branches above us with it. Beads of water drop from them. ‘We need to find him before the other birds gang up on him,’ he says.

  ‘Because he’s different?’ I say.

  ‘That’s right. Studying birds is one of my hobbies,’ he says. ‘Come on, then.’

  We walk along in silence, side by side. Richard is not like my bêtes noires. He’s clever; he knows things. Alwenna knows things, too, but not the same kind of things. But I won’t think about Alwenna. I look into the undergrowth and up to the branches on one side of the track and Richard rattles his stick everywhere on the other side.

  ‘What if you frighten Lloyd George with that stick?’ I say.

  ‘The fright’ll make him fly out,’ he says.

  ‘It might just make him put his head in his feathers and stay where he is,’ I say.

  ‘Well, we won’t be any worse off than we are now, will we?’ Richard says.

  We look and look. But we don’t see Lloyd George anywhere. The rain falls and falls, fine and misty; it runs down inside the neck of my school mackintosh and chills me. It’s hard to see anything at all. Even the lights from the houses find it difficult to spill out into this mist.

  ‘Perhaps he flew straight down the hill,’ I say. ‘Perhaps he could sense the sea nearby and wanted to get back to his own country. Perhaps he still knows, deep inside his heart, where that is. Perhaps—’

  ‘Perhaps he did,’ says Richard. ‘But it’s a long way from here to Australia. Anyway, I expect he was bred in captivity. Shall we turn back and go down the road?’ He looks up and down the track.

  ‘I’m not sure he’d have flown into this darkness, you know.’

  I can’t hear Nain calling any more. I wonder how far she’s gone up the hill. She didn’t put a coat on before running out. What if she catches a cold and becomes ill?

  ‘How far can a little budgie fly?’ I say.

  ‘I don’t think he’d go far,’ says Richard. ‘I expect he’s only used to flying around a room, isn’t he?’

  We walk back along the track towards the road. The mud will be spattered all the way up my socks and legs and Mam will be cross with me.

  ‘You don’t look like Bethan,’ says Richard.

  I know that. Mam’s always telling me. And I wouldn’t look like Bethan if I look like Tada, would I?

  ‘You don’t look like Caroline,’ I say.

  ‘I do a bit,’ he says. ‘Did you know we’re twins?’

  ‘Yes. Bethan said,’ I say. ‘Can you read each other’s minds and things like that?’

  ‘I can’t read Caroline’s mind at all,’ he says. ‘I think she and Bethan can read each other’s minds. They think the same about everything. Except they don’t really think much.’

  We look at each other and he pulls a face at me and we both start laughing.

  ‘You’re different to other girls,’ he says.

  Mam’s always telling me that, too. She says: People think you’re odd.

  ‘How d’you know?’ I say.

  ‘I’ve seen you around,’ he says. I haven’t seen him around, much. ‘And Bethan says you’re odd.’

  You see? Odd, again.

  He looks down at my face and smiles at me with his gappy teeth showing. ‘I like odd,’ he says.

  My stomach jumps. Is it that old family stomach?

  ‘Lloyd George,’ I remind him.

  ‘Indeed,’ Richard says, and we stride on. He doesn’t notice that he’s splashing mud over my feet. From his jacket pocket he pulls two Black Jacks and gives me one. They’re a bit damp.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, and pick the sticky paper off. ‘They’re my favourite sweets in the whole world.’

  Richard laughs. ‘Perhaps Lloyd George’s stayed nearer home than we think,’ he says. ‘Let’s go back up your road first.’

  ‘I looked along there on the way down,’ I say.

  ‘It won’t take long to double check,’ says Richard.

  It’s becoming darker and wetter all the time. Will we be able to see Lloyd George even if he’s there?

  We reach the road and walk past Rock Terrace and as we turn the corner to my terrace, old Dafydd Owen at Number 1 turns on his bedroom light. And there on his bedroom windowsill is a bright little blue ball. I’m sure I can see it trembling from here.

  ‘Look,’ say Richard and I at the same time.

  ‘If we knock on the door we’ll scare him away,’ I say.

  ‘But how can we get him down?’ says Richard. ‘I don’t think I can reach from the lower windowsill. And I get vertigo, anyway.’

  ‘I’m good at climbing,’ I say. ‘If you help me to climb on that side wall I can reach from there. But what shall I catch him with? He always scratches me.’ I hadn’t thought about that.

  Richard looks through his jacket pockets and then his trouser pockets and then more pockets inside his jacket until he pulls out a wodge of paper and unfolds it into a paper bag and blows into it to open it. ‘I’ll hand this to you when you’re up there,’ he says. ‘See if you can scoop him up into it. It won’t hurt him. Then you can pass the bag back to me before you come down.’

  Richard makes me a step with his hands and I haul myself up onto the side wall. It’s wet and slithery. ‘Hold on to my feet so I don’t slip when I lean over,’ I say to Richard and he grabs my ankles from where he’s standing at the foot of the wall.

  I ease myself forward bit by bit at an angle towards the windowsill. Lloyd George hasn’t moved but I can see his feathers moving in and out, in and out with his breath. I aim the paper bag at him.

  ‘Quick,’ says Richard in a hoarse whisper. ‘I can hear someone coming.’

  I’m trying to be quick when a screech pierces the mist that swirls around me. ‘Gwenni,’ shouts Mam. ‘What do you think you’re doing standing there letting a boy look up your skirt?’

  ‘What did she say?’ says Richard, still holding my ankles. It’s lucky Richard doesn’t understand Welsh.

  The sash window just above me crashes open and old Dafydd Owen sticks his head out and croaks, ‘Murder. Murder. Help. Police.’

  Lloyd George lifts his head and fluffs up his bright blue feathers and hurtles off the sill straight past my ear into the perilous darkness. Mam shrieks, and Richard lets go of my ankles and rushes away into the night too.

  32

  I shouldn’t be here. Mam will be cross. Though she can’t get any crosser than she’s been since Thursday night because I won’t tell her who was holding my ankles. Tada knows, but he won’t tell either. My feet slow down as I near Brwyn Coch and see the front door agape.

  Then Catrin comes racing along the path. ‘Gwenni.’ She almost screams as she tugs at my hand to pull me into the house. ‘I wanted to come to see you but Mami said no we can’t go down into the town, we are much too busy. But I wanted to see you again before we go away and now you’ve come to see me instead. Hooray.’

  ‘Go away?’ I look around the kitchen. There are faint marks on the walls where pictures and photographs once hung and c
rates on the floor with their tops nailed down and the dresser is in two pieces, the top leaning against the drawers, and the kitchen chairs are stacked in pairs, seat on seat, and there’s no fire in the range. ‘When?’

  ‘Today,’ says Catrin. She hugs my hand and puts it to her lips and kisses it.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ I say. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To live with Aunty Meg in Cricieth,’ she says. ‘Mami said she didn’t want anyone to know where we were. But she didn’t mean you, Gwenni.’

  ‘Yes, she did.’ Angharad stands in the doorway to the hall leaning against the doorpost. ‘She didn’t want anyone at all to know. It’s a big secret.’

  ‘But why is it a secret?’ I ask.

  Angharad shrugs. The bones in her shoulders stick up like two little wings. She begins to kick her heel against the doorpost. Kick. Kick. Kick.

  ‘Gwenni won’t tell,’ says Catrin. ‘You won’t, will you, Gwenni?’

  I shake my head. ‘But why are you leaving at all?’

  ‘Mr Edwards wants the house back for a new shepherd,’ says Catrin. ‘And he’s taken Mot to live with him. And all our geese. Even the one I followed into the sky in your story. I think he’s a bad man. Don’t you think he’s a bad man, Gwenni?’

  Angharad scowls at her. ‘Mami asked Twm Edwards to have Mot and the geese,’ she says. ‘And he said we could stay as long as we wanted. I heard him tell Mami. And I heard Mami tell Aunty Meg that she wanted us to be able to escape from it all.’

  ‘All what?’ I say.

  Angharad shrugs again and kicks at the doorpost.

  ‘Angharad, Catrin, what are you doing down there?’ Miss Cadwalader’s voice makes me jump. It doesn’t belong in Brwyn Coch.

  ‘Gwenni’s here, Aunty Meg,’ Catrin says.

  I can hear Mrs Evans’s voice but it’s so faint that I can’t hear what she says. Catrin and I move into the hall. Mrs Evans and Miss Cadwalader come down the stairs and Mrs Evans stops halfway down.

  I look up at her. ‘I didn’t know you were going away,’ I say. ‘And Catrin and Angharad.’

  ‘It was a sudden decision, Gwenni. No time to tell anyone.’ Mrs Evans brushes her hair back from her face with the back of her hand. The curly wisps wave in the draught she makes, like the seaweed under my night-time sea.

  Miss Cadwalader puts her arm around my shoulders and turns me towards the door. ‘You’ll understand, I’m sure, Gwenni,’ she says, ‘how busy we are. We’re expecting the big Rowlands van any minute now to move everything for us.’ She pushes me towards the door and as I step over the threshold I look back and there is Catrin quivering from head to heel with tears running down her cheeks. How can I leave her? Angharad is kicking at the bottom stair now. Kick. Kick. Kick. Her face is like a sheet of paper with nothing written on it.

  Out of my pocket I pull the next chapter of Catrin in the Clouds and the postcard I bought especially for Catrin. I push the story back in and hold the postcard out. ‘Look, Catrin,’ I say. ‘I was bringing you this picture of the castle. See, you’d think someone was standing right up in the hills, higher than here, to take the picture and you can see the sea beyond the castle and there’s Lln and you can just see the rock with the castle in Cricieth.’ Catrin takes the card from me and looks at it, rubbing her eyes with her other hand and sniffling like a little dog. ‘D’you remember thinking you could fly there?’ I say. ‘So, if you stand near the castle in Cricieth you can look straight back at our castle and you won’t be very far away at all.’

  Mrs Evans stumbles down the last of the stairs. ‘Meg,’ she says, ‘let Gwenni take Angharad and Catrin out to play whilst we’re waiting for the van.’ She takes the card from Catrin. ‘How kind of you, Gwenni,’ she says, looking at it. ‘We’ll find a frame for it and Catrin and Angharad can have it on the wall in their new bedroom.’

  ‘Just until the Rowlands van comes, then,’ says Miss Cadwalader.

  Catrin catches hold of my hand and we set off. The rain has stopped but everywhere is wet and the sound of water dripping from the roof and the trees follows us down the field. I look around to see where Angharad is and she’s following slowly, kicking at the tussocks as she walks.

  ‘Run, Gwenni. Run,’ Catrin shouts. ‘Run until we fly off the edge of the field and don’t stop until we get to where we want to go.’ She stops and swings round to face me. ‘Can we fly far, far away, Gwenni? Can we? I don’t want to live with Aunty Meg. I want to live with you.’

  I squeeze her hand. ‘Let’s wait for Angharad,’ I say, and when Angharad walks up to us I catch hold of her hand, too, and the three of us run and run until we’re almost at the stream and Angharad stumbles and pulls us all down into the wet grass.

  ‘I didn’t want to run,’ says Angharad.

  ‘And I wanted to fly, Gwenni.’ Catrin pants as she tries to catch her breath. ‘I wanted to fly. I wanted to fly away with you.’

  ‘People can’t fly. I told you before,’ says Angharad. ‘It’s all pretend.’ She lies on the grass and closes her eyes and goes away from us.

  I sit up and pull Catrin out of the dampness to sit on my lap. ‘When you get to Cricieth,’ I say, ‘you can look at your postcard and you can pretend that you’ve flown all the way across that sea to get there and when you want to, you can fly all the way back to visit me.’

  ‘But it’s not real, is it?’ says Angharad without opening her eyes. ‘Flying.’

  ‘How do you know?’ I say. ‘It can be real if you want it to be.’

  ‘You sound like Mami used to,’ says Catrin as she snuggles into my lap. Her hair under my chin is soft and smells of Mrs Evans’s violet scent.

  I put my arms around her and whisper, ‘When you fly really high, Catrin, you can hear the Earth sing. It’s like being enchanted; you never want to come down from the sky.’

  ‘I’d like to hear that song,’ says Catrin. ‘Will you come to visit me, Gwenni? And teach me to fly?’

  ‘I’d like to,’ I say. ‘But I don’t know if Mam will let me.’

  ‘Your mam is always cross just like Tada was, isn’t she, Gwenni?’ says Catrin. ‘Maybe she’ll go away, as well. Maybe there’s a Cross Land that all the cross people go to.’ She giggles. ‘Maybe you’ll go away, too, Angharad.’

  Angharad jumps up from the grass and begins to run up the field. ‘I can hear the Rowlands van coming,’ she says.

  ‘Oh, no, Gwenni,’ says Catrin.

  I lift Catrin to her feet and stand up myself. I hold her hand tight. ‘Come on,’ I say and I run up the field, pulling Catrin behind me. ‘Let’s see if we can fly.’

  ‘But it’s the wrong way, Gwenni,’ says Catrin. ‘It’s the wrong way to fly away.’

  And so it is.

  The Rowlands van lurches and sways across the field to the house. It isn’t a very big van into which to pack all their lives.

  Mrs Evans is at the door watching her sister show the driver where to go. ‘Catrin,’ she says. ‘Come here quickly. Give this to Gwenni from you and Angharad. I think she’ll like it.’

  Catrin lets go of my hand and runs to her mother and takes the brown paper bag from her and opens the top to peek in. ‘You will like it, Gwenni,’ she says.

  Mrs Evans pushes Angharad towards Catrin. ‘From both of you,’ she says. So Catrin holds the bag and pulls Angharad along with her to bring the bag to me. I take it from her. ‘Can I look now?’ I ask Mrs Evans.

  She smiles and nods. The bag smells of her scent when I open it, and here inside is the blotter rocker with the pretty violet painted on the knob. How did she know I wanted it so much?

  ‘A keepsake, Gwenni,’ she says. ‘Don’t forget us. Keep us in your heart.’

  I nod. I hug Catrin hard but Angharad slips away. I turn and run past the Rowlands van as it backs up to the front door and I don’t stop until I get to the road and then I huddle down on the grass verge among the damp and cottony leaves of the cornflowers and hold my stomach tight. It hurts so much I can hardly breathe.r />
  33

  Mam grabs me by the wrist and squeezes hard. ‘Where have you been all afternoon?’ she says.

  ‘Walking,’ I say.

  ‘That’s not what I heard,’ Mam says. ‘Get in that house.’ She lets go of my wrist as she flings me into the hallway and I stumble against the hat-stand. Mam’s gripped my wrist so tightly it has red weals all round it and I rub at them to ease the pain. This is worse than the Chinese burns Bethan used to give me when I was little. Mam pushes me through the living room door until I crash into the back of Tada’s armchair.

  ‘What’s happened now?’ Tada folds the Daily Herald and puts it under his chair cushion as he gets up. ‘What’s the matter, Magda?’

  Mam ignores him and flounces into the scullery, her mouth a thin red line cutting into her face.

  ‘Mam’s cross because I went to Brwyn Coch,’ I say.

  A crash comes from the scullery as Mam drops something into the sink, then the furious noise of water running from the tap.

  ‘She told you not to go there again,’ says Bethan from Mam’s armchair.

  She did. But I didn’t promise I wouldn’t go, did I? ‘I took something for Catrin and I thought Mrs Evans might need help. She always said it was a great help to have me looking after the girls,’ I say to Tada. ‘I wasn’t there for long, and then I went for a walk.’

  ‘You mean well, Gwenni,’ says Tada. ‘But you should do as your mother tells you.’

  ‘Give us all a quiet life,’ says Bethan.

  ‘Bethan,’ says Tada.

  ‘Well, it’s true,’ says Bethan.

  I promised I wouldn’t say anything about Mrs Evans and Angharad and Catrin going to live with Miss Cadwalader. But by tomorrow everyone will know that they’ve gone away from Brwyn Coch. ‘They were leaving,’ I say. ‘Going away.’ I rub my thumb along the blotter rocker in my pocket. I won’t tell anyone about it. Mam would probably throw it on the fire, like the dead fox. I take my mackintosh off and hang it up; later, I’ll put the blotter in the box under the bed.