by Rebecca Bryn
He picked the melody of The House of the Rising Sun. The walls amplified the bass twang of the guitar; he added chords, and sang, letting the lyrics take him beyond the roof of the underground station to the legendary bordello in New Orleans. A petite girl in a knitted hat and jumper listened from the far side of the exit, rubbing her hands together and stamping her feet. Coins clattered sparsely into the cap at his feet and he nodded his thanks.
He discarded his guitar in favour of a violin and broke into Fairytale of New York, a bit late for Christmas but it suited his mood. The girl pushed through the travellers towards him and dumped her bag on the platform beside her. The hat trapping her blonde hair had a Nordic design, and the overlong jumper that matched it covered torn and faded skin-tight jeans; she tapped her foot and sang the lyrics with him.
A small crowd drew closer. He stamped in time to the rhythm, and the girl stamped with him. Usually he sang both parts, changing his voice… He stepped to one side and raised his eyebrows in invitation. The girl’s voice was powerful, note perfect, and she sang her passion as they faced each other across the battle line drawn by the violin. They stalked each other within the circle of onlookers who clapped in time to the music.
The dying notes of bow on string were accompanied by the rattle of coins and the flutter of paper. Vibrations beneath his feet warned of a train approaching through the tunnel, chilling the platform with its icy draught. The crowd dissipated as he counted the coins and notes into his hand and held out half to the girl. ‘I haven’t seen you round here before.’
Her eyes were a startled blue. ‘I can’t take your money.’
He jammed his cloth cap on his head and pulled down the peak at a rakish angle. ‘You’re turning down cash? Take it. You earned it.’
‘Thanks.’ She clenched the cash in one hand, shivering.
‘Don’t you have a coat?’
She shook her head.
He pushed the rest of the money into her hands. It wasn’t a fortune but it might keep her warm. ‘Go buy yourself one.’
She looked him up and down. ‘You’d give this to me when you’re on the streets?’
He rubbed a two-day stubble, stubborn as his wiry hair, and surveyed the jacket, neckerchief, jeans, and boots he’d thought a fashion statement. ‘Do I look that bad? I’ve got a bedsit… couple of stops away. I come down here for the acoustics.’
She gave him his money back. ‘I can’t take this under false pretences. I’ve just started work as a journalist. I’m researching winter on the streets, for an article.
‘So if I’d been a beggar you’d have taken my money and gone along with me, for the sake of your career?’
‘No… of course not… But I was planning on sleeping out. I’d have needed it.’
‘And now you’re not? Too cold for you?’ He put his instruments into their cases. ‘I can just see the headline... if you were really interested enough in the truth to go through with it. A Tramp’s New Year… no, a photograph of some alchy with a gin bottle, entitled The Spirit of Christmas Future. Perhaps you’d like me to pose for a fake photo?’
‘Don’t be sanctimonious. What you’re doing is no better. You’re a professional beggar.’
‘I entertain. I don’t beg.’ He slung the cases over his shoulder. ‘That’s not to say I don’t need the cash. You really don’t have a coat?’
‘No.’
‘And you were really planning on sleeping out like that?’
She nodded. ‘I wanted to know how it felt to be out in winter with nothing. I am interested in the truth.’
‘You must be mad.’
‘It’s called being professional.’ She grinned. ‘But I’m freezing, and I need to be alive to report the truth.’
‘I could buy you a coffee.’
‘Okay.’ She held out her hand. ‘Maddy Wilder.’
‘Greg Anderson.’
He paid for the coffee and found a table. ‘Who do you write for, Maddy?’
She stirred in two spoonsful of sugar and cupped her hands around the mug. ‘I’m trying to impress a local rag but I write for anyone who’ll pay me. You sing professionally?’
‘I’d like to. I do gigs in pubs most evenings, and play the underground when I don’t have a gig. It helps pay the rent.’
‘What do you do the rest of the time?’
‘I got made redundant from an IT firm. I’m officially unemployed. I have an interview after New Year.’
‘You have a great voice.’ She stared at him across the table, as if she wanted to say more.
‘Maybe we could do a gig together, sometime?’
‘I’ve never sung in public, before.’
You’re a natural.’
‘I’m not sure.’
He finished his coffee and pushed the cup away. Outside the crowds on the pavement began to cheer and shout. ‘You know where to find me if you change your mind.’ He got to his feet. ‘Unless I find a job, that is. Happy New Year, Maddy. Nice meeting you. I hope I’ll get to sing with you again. We could be good together.’
‘Maybe.’
He paused in the doorway, half-deciding to go back and ask her if she wanted to go for a drink later. She was a breath of fresh air, alive and vibrant: blown into his life and just as quickly drifting out of it.
A girl like Maddy wouldn’t be interested in a misfit like him. She smiled and waved. He raised a hand in parting, and walked back towards the underground station. He was stupid to let her go without at least asking her out. He turned round and dashed back to the restaurant: Maddy had gone.
Letters waited in his box: he unlocked it and ran up the stairs to his bedsit. A brown official envelope looked like the one he was waiting for, the one for which he’d put his life on hold instead of asking Maddy out, straight off. He stared at it, undecided; now it had arrived, it seemed disloyal to open it. Knowing wouldn’t make him someone else. He pushed it unopened into his inside jacket pocket. Maybe, he wasn’t ready yet to give up the known for the unknown.
It could wait until after New Year: perhaps his last one with his family the way it should be. He took the letter from his pocket and threw it into the bin: he didn’t need to know. He paced across the kitchen, swivelled on one heel and paced back. If he didn’t want to know why had he sent the damned request? He picked the letter out of the bin and shoved it back in his pocket. He’d decide after he’d talked it over with Mum and Dad.
***
Alana’s first view of the Pembrokeshire coast took her breath away. She parked in a lay-by and rummaged beneath her duvet for her sketch pad. Careful strokes described the shape of the headlands, the distant island and the lines of surf. She reassessed the relationships between the shapes and emphasised a new line, then compared her sketch to the scene. It would be a good starting point for a peaceful, contemplative watercolour, but it didn’t stir her soul the way the acrylic painting did that Mr John had bought.
She turned to a clean page and looked again at the view. Mr John’s painting had a lot wrong with it: the perspective was out and she hadn’t made the most of the recession. Even the colours she’d used weren’t right. Mr John hadn’t bought a perfect seascape: he’d bought passion, the anger she’d held captive all her life. Passion was what was lacking in her urban and pastoral scenes. The reason was obvious, now. She’d never let the man-defined landscape into her soul and, if it wasn’t in there, how could she let it out?
She stared across the bay and let the sea and the land in. Her fingers moved of their own volition, stabbing stubborn lines on virgin paper. The cliffs were bastions of ancient rock, forged in fire and spewed from the belly of the earth: Britain’s foremost defence against elemental destruction. The sea was a vast primal force tugged ever onwards by the power of the moon, each century, each inch of conquered rock hard-won. Gorse roots clenched into the earth, and held fast against the wind. Here, before her, the eons-old battle between the immovable and the irresistible raged with immutable fury.
The landscape ar
ound her wasn’t the picture-postcard tourist playground she’d expected. It was a remote, sparse land, scoured by the unimaginable weight of glaciers, and settled by stone-age and iron-age man, who’d left the traces of their struggle upon the earth, and their descendants still clinging to a tenuous existence.
The second sketch blew her away: she could do this. She could paint it in the acrylics she loved. She made quick notes of the colours she’d use, indicated the direction of the light with an arrow, and the wind direction with another: used a softer pencil to suggest contrast and shaded areas, and committed the scene to memory. It was enough; she needed the passion, the light, not the detail, and her hands itched to paint it.
She drove on, intoxicated with something no breath-test would show. So what if the criss-cross of roads had no signposts and didn’t seem to go anywhere? So what if the nearest big town was half a day away and most of the county seemed closed for the winter? This was where she wanted to be.
She crossed a stone bridge, and accelerated up the hill. Minnie slowed among clouds of black smoke. If the car stopped now, she’d push her over the sheer drop to the river, a mere yard from the edge of the unfenced single-track road, and claim on the insurance.
She reached the top of the hill with relief, and a virtually-empty petrol-tank, thanking the god of Mini Coopers for no snow or ice and a helping shove. Moorland stretched away to one side but the lone house opposite it was not The Haggard. Left or right? A cluster of roofs peeped among wind-sculpted trees. She turned towards them into a high-banked lane that opened onto a patch of grass with houses scattered round it in a rough square: Coed-y-Cwm, much as she’d seen it on her computer, but bleaker.
Minnie clattered to a halt and backfired. She cringed as a curtain twitched in a cottage across the green. Maybe, she should have prayed harder. She discounted the dwellings with cars parked outside, and some would be holiday homes in a place like this. Knowing her luck, The Haggard would be the unbelievably small cottage in the corner, with peeling paint and a sagging roof: her eighty percent shrank in value, always supposing her aunt’s estate even included The Haggard.
She walked towards it, reminded of the child-like doodles that decorated her notepad by the phone at home. Something about talking on the phone always made her revert to the four windows and central door format of childhood, with windows Mum always complained were too small. Except this cottage had Velux windows in the roof, not an upper floor like the house with the twitching curtain.
The Haggard: the name plate, carved in slate, was built into the garden wall. She opened the gate. Peeling blue paint on the door had a black vertical line daubed on it, thicker at the bottom than the top. A cross she could have understood if her aunt had died of the plague. She knocked on the door, thoughts of plague making her itch.
‘If you’re looking for Mrs Ap Dafydd, you’re too late.’
She turned to see a short, grey-haired woman at the gate. ‘I’m her niece.’
‘Oh… I didn’t know she had family. She never said.’ The woman’s tone suggested her niece could have come sooner: when her aunt was alive, for example. ‘You do know she died.’
‘Yes. I’ve only just found out she existed.’
The woman’s voice took on a more sympathetic tone. ‘It was a sad business. I’m Harriet. I suppose the cottage will be sold, or will the family keep it as a holiday home? It could do with some work.’
‘It could do with knocking down.’ And fumigating… She scratched another itch. ‘You know how my aunt died?’
Harriet gestured to the cottage next-door to The Haggard. ‘I’ll put the kettle on. You look as if you could use something warm.’
‘Thanks. I’m Alana. What was Aunt Siân like?’
Harriet opened her front door. A small fat terrier greeted them, barking. ‘Shush, Bramble. Down.’ She shooed the dog away. ‘Come in, Alana. Don’t mind her. Siân was good neighbour. Always ready to help. I’m an incomer, from Manchester, only been here ten years. The other people here are friendly enough, and she got on with most of them, but…’ The wave of her hand, and the twitching curtain, said the rest.
‘So how did she die?’
‘It was back in that freezing weather.’ She pointed to Bramble, now asleep in front of the fire. ‘She must have gone outside to look for Bramble, here, and fallen on the ice. Broke her hip. She was found next morning, poor soul. Froze to death. Do you know who Siân left her estate to? I only ask because of the dog.’
‘She left everything to me.’
‘I suppose Bramble belongs to you then, if you want her.’
‘I can’t afford to feed myself, never mind a dog.’
‘I don’t mind keeping her. She’s company when Kevin’s at work. As long as she doesn’t chase Rhiannon’s cat or the old witch will put an evil spell on me.’
‘Old witch?’
‘Didn’t you see the curtains twitching when you arrived? She doesn’t miss much, that one. She’s harmless, I suppose, but very eccentric. Lives with her sister, I think, poor thing that she is… never goes out. Won’t even open the door if Rhiannon’s out. They keep themselves to themselves.’
She glanced out of the window. ‘Thanks for the tea. I’d like to have a look at the cottage before it gets dark… see what I’m letting myself in for.’
‘You have a key?’
‘No.’
‘Siân kept a spare under a stone on the wall, right-hand side of the gate, in case of emergencies. I expect it’s still there. The police made the house secure after the paramedics had… you know. They may have the other key.’
‘I’ll look, thanks.’ If she could get inside, it would be warmer than a night under her duvet in the back of Minnie. ‘Oh, and Happy New Year.’
The key was where Siân had left it. The door led into a long room, whose ceiling followed the sag of a roof that was supported on bulging walls. Stairs that shared a common ancestry with a ladder, led to a galleried loft. She could see the flounces of a bed valance through the balustrades.
A pile of post lay on the floor. She gathered it together and closed the front door, but it made little difference except to the light: the inside of the cottage was freezing. A book lay open on the small table by the sofa: mould spotted a half-full cup of tea. Logs lay heaped beside a grate, the fire long-since burned to ash, and on the wall above the hearth was a portrait of a young girl with dark curly hair and an impish smile.
She switched on the light for a better look; the portrait was well-executed but she couldn’t make out the signature. She’d painted people into her work often enough, but a proper portrait was something she’d always wanted to try. She laid the post on the table, unable yet to deal with anything so personal.
‘So, Aunt Siân. Is this what you’ve left me?’ Her dead aunt remained silent. At one end of the room, beside the fireplace, a low door opened into the kitchen. The refrigerator hummed quietly. Dishes, long-dried, were stacked neatly on the draining board. She switched on the central-heating boiler, opened the fridge door and shut it again quickly. Yuck: mouldy cheese, putrefying vegetables and separated milk.
Back in the main living-room, another door led to a bathroom and a box-room that contained a computer. Siân had obviously slept upstairs in the loft. There would be room under the loft area for her easels and a table, and plenty of wall space for hanging her work. It would be an easy cottage to heat, working, sleeping and eating in the one room.
It was a stupid idea. The place wouldn’t stand up long enough for her to take possession. It was what Dad would call a money-pit, and she didn’t have that kind of money unless her aunt’s legacy included a lot of cash: she had Mr John’s twenty percent to pay. She climbed the stairs to the loft. It had a three-quarter bed with floral bedding that matched blinds on two Velux roof-lights. A dog basket sat in the corner but the blanket on the foot of the bed suggested Bramble had slept with her mistress.
She sat on the bed and opened a bedside drawer. It contained a box with dress jewell
ery and a handful of letters: personal… private. She replaced them unopened, and picked up a photograph in a silver frame. It was of a young man and woman with a girl aged around two or three. It looked like the child in the portrait. Siân and her husband? The solicitor had said Siân had no living children. Siân’s mouth was like Mum’s and her hair was a similar colour, dark like hers. Why had she never known her aunt existed? She was named for her, after all.
She put the photograph down and returned to the box room. Shelves held paper, art materials, and a half-finished seascape in watercolour. Her aunt was a painter, too? She switched on the computer: bills would have to be settled, people notified, and Siân could have left details. The screen asked for a password. She tried the obvious one, Bramble… password rejected.
She sorted the post: a bank statement with not much of a balance, an electricity bill… another final demand she’d have to pay… the rest was junk mail.
Her stomach rumbled. She’d put a tank of petrol on her credit card, buy a takeaway, and eat it watching the sun set over the island. She locked the door and replaced the key under its stone. Glancing back at the cottage and the house across the green she had an odd feeling of déjà-vu: the central door and the too-small windows. Had she been here before? Before whatever event had erased Siân from her family and her mind?
***
Rhiannon let the curtain fall back into place. The girl had gone. Who was she? An estate agent, doing a valuation before putting the cottage on the market… that would be it. She’d seen her put something under a stone on the wall. A key? Siân had no relatives as far as she knew, but suppose the girl was a distant relation. Suppose she began poking her nose where it wasn’t wanted.
She took her pouch of rune tablets from a drawer and felt inside for those that called to her. The runes never lied, though the one for ice she’d streaked on Siân’s door had worked better than she’d dared hope. She cast them across the white tablecloth: even the runes refused to speak clearly. Algiz stayed silent.
