Megan went first very red and then whiter than ever before. ‘Don’t you dare to touch my doves! They’re not pigeons, they’re doves and they belonged to my Mummy and now they’re mine.’
‘I only say, they make such a filthy mess—’
‘Oh, let her keep them,’ said Conway Jones, glancing at his daughter’s flower face, nowadays always so pinched and pale. (Women! You’d think they’d be content with a man’s single-minded obsession, without getting jealous over a twelve-year-old child.)
‘I wish I could go and live with my Auntie Annie,’ said Megan. ‘She wouldn’t mind my doves. She never minds anything.’
‘Now, Megan, I’ve told you. Don’t talk to your new mother like that.’
‘She’s not my mother. Nobody’s my mother, my mother’s dead. And I don’t see why I have to go on living with this one. Auntie Annie would let me live with her, she wants me to. You’ve got your rotten new baby,’ she said to her step-mother, ‘why can’t you be satisfied with that?’ Giddy-giddy-goo all day, she thought to herself furiously; and they needn’t think I don’t know what they did to get it! It was disgusting, one’s own father and this horrible Auntie Myra. What on earth had he gone and married her for? ‘We were all right before you came,’ she said to her. ‘I did all the house, I helped on the farm, he said I was a wonderful cook, as good as Mummy used to be…’
‘Now, Megan!’
‘Giddy-giddy-goo all day over that horrible baby,’ said Megan. ‘Why can’t I go and live with my Auntie Annie?’
Myra Jones had no intention of letting her step-daughter live elsewhere. The child was a bore, slinking about the place with that look of dumb resentment, but she was also extremely useful. She seemed to delight in the dreary jobs about the farm which Conway, presumably accustomed to the complaisance of his first wife, had apparently expected his second to take over; and after the years alone with her father, accepted as the norm a good deal of work in the house. Moreover, it was true that she was really a very good cook. And besides—there’d be talk. With no company but that of the neighbouring farmers’ wives, censorious already of the town-bred stranger usurping the place that a good, hard-working proper Welshwoman might have filled, she knew that she must pay lip-service at least to their ridiculous code of ethics. (To think of it!—she, Myra Mays, born and bred in London, in the great metropolis itself—kowtowing to a lot of stout, jabbering Welshies with their aprons of sacking tied round with odd ends of rope, going off to their dingy cow-sheds for the milking…!)
Myra Jones was a small woman, small and slim and hard, to match the small, thin hard toughness of her husband; a small, red-haired woman with a foxy look—not unattractive but by no means so handsome or so successful in life as to justify so over-weening a self-conceit. Thankful, at nearly forty, to have caught even Conway Jones, sheep-farmer in a small way in these remote Carmarthenshire mountains—she could still deceive herself and him into believing that she had done him the honour of a lifetime. And indeed, finding in the marriage bed an intemperance to match his own, Conway Jones had delivered himself over body and soul to this new conqueror. Fox and vixen; and as they wrestled in the throes of a passion new in the experience of both, neither with a thought to spare for the pale face, sick with awakening disgust, the ear going crimson, pressed against an intervening wall.
Fox and vixen; by night, and by day also—small, compact, reddy-brown—handsome, hard. She vicious. He brutal.
He brutal. But with one lingering weakness: the thin, eager, loving face that in the first days of his new marriage had still looked confidingly into his own. But Myra had not come here to play second fiddle to any first wife’s brat. Just wait till I give him a son, she thought; that’ll put her miserable little nose out of joint…!
And the son was born: the triumph, the vindication—to the woman the be-all and end-all of a life without other pure joys; and all day long while a twelve-year-old child laboured at school and on the farm and about the house, the middle-aged mother played with her treasure, giddy-giddy-giddy-goo…
But still, in the tall white dovecote that Daddy had built for Mummy in the days forever gone by, Megan’s white doves went coo-coo-coo-coo-coo.
The business of the doves became a trial of strength between the woman and the child. In no other way was it possible nowadays to score off her. She seemed in the year of her father’s new marriage to have grown, deliberately, a shell around her heart—no longer could be wounded by refusal, by rebuff, by disappointment, for she asked nothing, proposed nothing, demanded neither thanks nor praise. Pallid, blank-eyed, indifferent, she worked through her round of toil and gave no sign. With increasing frustration the step-mother sought for ways of piercing the unchildlike matrix of her unresponse. Only in the matter of the white doves did a quiver of alarm show now and then where vulnerability lay.
The white doves that had belonged to her mother—and now were her own.
On this subject alone, however, the husband, irked by the needless jealousy of the abandoned favourite, proved adamant. ‘The birds do no harm. What’s a few droppings, in a farmyard of all places? Leave the girl alone!’
And it became an obsession with her; to win him over in this last poor bastion of his daughter’s defences.
I’ll get her out of the way, she thought. It’ll be easier then. And when the Easter holidays came, she consented with surprising readiness to a fortnight’s visit with the famous Auntie Anne, whose farm was a few miles distant in a neighbouring valley. It meant that she must take on chores that she had so far avoided; but, at least one of them should not be the cleansing of walls and window-sills smeared with the clayey white droppings of Megan’s doves.
Conway Jones was a man of few needs. A clean house, a decent meal and a woman in his bed were all he asked in life. The first two his small daughter had struggled to provide in the days following her mother’s death; but he had grown ravenous for the third and now that it was provided and with such bounty, seemed almost to be trying to make up for lost time. For his wife to deprive him, therefore, would bring him pretty smartly to heel. Meanwhile, day by day in the child’s absence, she reproached him with the state of the yard, made filthy by those horrible birds with their day-long, maddening coo-coo-coo, and begged him to get rid of them now, while he had the chance. ‘She won’t mind if it’s done while she’s not here to see it. If they’ve gone by the time she gets back, she’ll forget all about them. Come on—wring their dirty white necks and be done with it!’ ‘She’ll make our lives a hell if I do, nag, nag, nag about her Auntie Annie,’ he said; and added, as always: ‘Can’t you leave the girl alone?’
So that night she turned her back to him, sulked and was wounded because he put his daughter before his wife; for a week refused his overtures. And one day when a neighbouring farmer called and found her in the kitchen sitting nursing the baby by the hot, old, old-fashioned range, she made no move but sat on with the two men, letting him see her heavy white breast, without concealment changing the baby over: glancing up at her husband with the faintest of taunting, triumphant smiles. Goaded beyond endurance, he broke out suddenly. ‘Go and finish that job upstairs, woman! This is not the place for dealing with the child.’
‘But I’m waiting to talk to you about those doves,’ she said.
He stared back at her, defeated. ‘All right, all right. If it means so much to you—before she gets back, I’ll get rid of them.’ He took her by the arm and, baby and all, yanked her to her feet. ‘Only go on upstairs,’ he said.
‘Kill off Meggie’s doves, is it?’ said the man when she had gone. ‘She won’t like that. They were her Mam’s.’
‘Well, she’s got a new Mam now,’ said Conway Jones, shortly. ‘And she wants me to kill them off. So—well, you know women!—I’ll kill them.’
And on a mart day, shortly before Megan’s return, giving himself no time to think, he killed them, wringing their white necks one by one, throwing their still fluttering bodies into a heap at the foot of the tal
l white dovecote on its painted post in the middle of the yard; and came and stood sullenly in the kitchen doorway. ‘Well, I’ve done it. I’ll deal with them later. I must go now—I’ll miss the mart.’ But he knew that that was an excuse; he had left them there to let her see them, to let her understand as a fact what between them they had done. ‘She’ll never forgive us for this, you know,’ he said.
She shrugged, looking beyond him to where the pitiful heap now lay still, which once had been all murmurous beauty, strutting the cobbled yard on thin, pink stems of legs, filling the sky with a shifting white pattern of wings. ‘I’ll see to it,’ she said. ‘I’ll fix it so that she never mentions them again. Leave it to me!’ She gestured to the heap. ‘I’ll deal with them. You go off now to your mart.’ And as he moved away, she called out after him, prompted by some obscure desire, perhaps, to make him share with her the ugly guilt in her mind, ‘After all—pity to waste them? What do you think?’
He stopped dead; half turned; bowed his head and went heavily on.
Megan, arriving home after dark, for her father had driven over to collect her after the milking, felt no surprise at the silence from the sleeping dovecote. And she was distrait. It was hateful to be back again. A dozen times, Auntie Annie had said that she didn’t see why her poor Meggie should have to go on living with that woman. ‘When I think how it was when your Mam was alive, you three together so cosy up there! Nothing but the sex it’s been, bringing that Myra here. He has to have it, he never could rest without a woman; like a dog, he was, roaming the countryside for anyone that would do to put in your mother’s place. Well, some men are like that, can’t blame them; but now that he’s got it, no need to treat his own daughter like a servant around the house.’
‘It was all right till the baby came,’ said Megan, drawing a swift red herring across this ugly trail; all this talk about her father made her feel squeamish and sick inside. And if Auntie Annie knew what she knew! ‘But now they think of nothing else.’
‘Well, there you are—these men! Nothing for them but a son! And of course, with your father—coming so late in life…’
‘Giddy-giddy-goo all day,’ said Megan, disgustedly. ‘And he’s not much better than she is. One day I’ll just walk out of it, Auntie Annie, and come and live with you and Uncle for always. They couldn’t make me come back?’
‘No one can make anyone do anything,’ said her aunt. ‘If you just ran back here every time they took you home, what could they do? They can’t chain you up like a sheepdog.’ It was wrong, she knew, it was the child’s own father. But she hated the intruder in her sister’s place with a deep mistrustful hate for the small, tight face, the small, tight spirit in its armour of self-conceit. ‘You’re welcome here any time, Megan,’ she said. ‘We’d fight for you. You know that.’
Myra Jones had been right in prophesying that Megan would never outwardly refer to the fate of the doves. When she found what had been done—all that had been done—she was at first shocked white and speechless: ran a temperature, was racked with violent stomach pains unsusceptible to medical diagnosis (at least until the doctor heard the full story)—for a week retched and vomited over every morsel of food. But from then on she spoke not a word upon the subject: not a word. Only her face grew more pale, more pinched and blank than ever. ‘She looks half daft,’ said Myra Jones to herself, impatiently. And she held her thin body very tense; sometimes the rigid little hands would look almost like claws. But curiously enough—perhaps to fill the void left by the lost treasures of her childish heart—after a time she began to take an interest in the baby.
Outside reaction, however, astonished Myra. ‘I thought they were supposed to be tough farmers,’ she said to her husband. ‘All this ill-feeling because we used up a few unwanted birds in a pigeon pie!’
‘They weren’t unwanted,’ he said. ‘She wanted them. They were her mother’s. I suppose Lloyd has spread it: he heard you that day. And then the doctor.’ He brooded over it. ‘They’ll never forgive you for this in the valley,’ he said. He spoke gloomily. In those remote parts to lose the good-will of one’s neighbours was no light thing.
Nor was it for Myra. Now in the casual encounters in the tiny village shop, she felt that the women turned from her, behind her back exchanged glances of disgust and contempt. She made a special effort, rootled out a nice, respectable hat and attended the chapel; but in the chattering groups outside after the meeting, divided off into sexes as indeed they had been within, still she felt the everyday civilities, never very warm, grown unfriendly and chill. ‘Oh, well, so-and-so to them!’ she said to Conway. ‘I can do without them.’ ‘A day will come when you’ll find you can’t,’ he said. ‘But they’ll never accept you now. They’re sensible; but to make a child eat her own pets…’
‘She didn’t know it. She thought it was just pigeon pie.’
‘She knows it now,’ he said. ‘And so do they.’
She indulged in no more pigeon pies. But they killed a pig and this once more Megan accepted with equanimity, helping with the jointing, the salting, the packing away into the new deep freeze. Nor, to Myra’s surprise, had she punished them by any slacking off in her work about the house and farm; indeed, with her added self-appointed attendance upon the baby, her childish days seemed filled with toil.
And as she toiled—behind the pale face and the blank eyes that never now lighted up with eagerness and joy—within the frozen heart, what plans were hatching? Were they blind that they took no heed of the warnings inherent in the silence, in the face kept expressionless, in the tenseness of the meagre little body and those tight hands, like claws…?
Curious, for example, that one day, scrubbing down the wooden stairs, she, so scrupulous and careful, should have left a soapy patch at the top; so that her step-mother, predictably the next to descend, should skid and slide and come hurtling down the narrow flight—landing at the bottom with one foot twisted up beneath her, sick with pain. Megan came running in response to the cries and groans. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I fell down the stairs. I think I’ve broken my ankle.’
‘Oh, good,’ said Megan, hardly above her breath.
But the woman heard her. ‘Good?’
‘I only mean that it could have been your neck.’ Megan would have had no objection to her step-mother’s breaking her neck; but failing that, that she should have injured her ankle, rather than—say—her arm, best suited her own plans. She helped her, hopping and hobbling, to a chair and went to call her father. The milking could not wait; but directly it was done, he promised, he would drive his wife in to the doctor’s. (Send for him? What, to come right out here? You wouldn’t get Dr. Evans to drive twenty miles out and back again, just for a sprained ankle. Not now, anyway; not since…) ‘I’ll take you in the van,’ said Conway. ‘Just let me finish off the milking.’
‘I’ll see to everything,’ said Megan, all penitence over the soapy patch. ‘I’ll put the baby to bed. I’ll have the supper all ready for when you get back…’
And it was ready, pie in the oven, vegetables steaming on top of the range; a kettle on the boil. ‘Is Baby all right?’ said Myra, waiting for nothing else, painfully assisting herself to a kitchen chair.
‘Quite all right. He had his bottle and went straight off to sleep. No trouble at all.’
‘You’re certain? Conway, run up and see! I can’t face those stairs, at least till I’ve had a cup of tea and some aspirin.’
‘You’ll only wake him up, Daddy,’ said Megan. She had made the tea and now slapped down before them welcome, steaming cups. ‘He’s quite safe, fast asleep. Curled up so peacefully,’ she added with a most unwonted sentimentality, and for the first time for many a month looked directly into her step-mother’s face. ‘Like a little white dove,’ she said.
But when at last, agonisingly limping, Myra got herself upstairs to their bedroom—the cot was empty. The covers had not been disturbed. The baby was gone.
And Megan was gone too. No cries
and callings produced any glimpse of the pinched white face and unresponsive stare. ‘She’s up to some mischief,’ said Conway Jones, grim with fury. ‘She’s taken the child.’
‘For God’s sake…! Taken him where? He’s never been in that cot…’
They searched the upper storey, she hobbling after him, clutching at rails and doorposts, half helpless with pain. Nothing. And downstairs—nothing. He flung himself upon the telephone—no news of her at her aunt’s; rushed out, ran about the yard like a lunatic, slamming open the doors of barns and stables, even of the scrubbed-out piggeries, empty now. Nothing. Nothing. Night was upon them. ‘I’ll take the tractor and get help from the Lloyds—’
‘Conway, for God’s sake don’t leave me, I’ll go out of my mind.’
‘It’s all your own bloody fault,’ he said, ‘making her eat those doves.’ And he flung off, jerked the farm tractor into life, trundled away, at a snail’s pace as it seemed to him, short-cutting across the fields. But Lloyd, in other days so obliging and helpful, was unforthcoming now. ‘Got to wait in for the vet,’ he said. ‘Cow gone sick. I’m sorry.’
‘The vet! Don’t you hear what I say, man?—my baby’s missing. That child—’
‘Just up to a bit of devilment, I dare say,’ said Lloyd. ‘Pay you back for that business about her birds.’ His look said: And I don’t blame her. ‘She’ll do the boy no harm, she’ll have him safe somewhere.’ He had been painfully sorting out accounts at the kitchen table and now he turned back to them. ‘Don’t you worry. She’ll have him safe somewhere.’
‘Unless she’s baked him into a pigeon pie,’ said his wife, nastily.
A pigeon pie! He stood there staring at her, stood immovable, staring, as though he could not lift his feet from that spot where he stood on the red kitchen tiles. ‘A pigeon pie…? A pigeon pie…?’ He stammered and blurted, standing there, reeling. ‘A pigeon pie?’ But it had been a pork pie that she had baked for them to come home to: a raised pork pie. ‘Delicious!’ he had said, congratulating himself upon the rearing of the pig rather than his small daughter upon her cooking. ‘Delicious! Tender as a baby’s bottom!’ Now he stood, grey-white, shuddering, retching—lurched over to the white kitchen sink and there vomited his heart up; stood, arms rigid, hands fisted on the rounded porcelain edge, heaving and gagging till the vomit should come again; sloshed water from the cold tap across his mouth and turned and bolted, wordless, out of the house and into the darkness.
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