by Iris Gower
‘Am I not welcome, then?’
‘Please, you are most welcome. This is Eynon’s house and if Eynon wishes you to stay then stay you must.’
Georgina sat near Llinos. ‘Now we can have a cosy chat.’
Llinos tried to hide her impatience. ‘Have some tea while it’s hot.’ She sat back in her chair, realizing quite suddenly that she was tired. It had been a long day.
‘My godmother wishes me to marry Eynon,’ Georgina said, putting down her cup with a dainty droop of her wrist. ‘But he takes no interest in me. Is he in love with you?’
Llinos shook her head. ‘Eynon and I are great friends.’ She looked levelly at Georgina. ‘I have no romantic interest in Eynon at all.’
‘That’s all right then. You and I have no need to be at loggerheads. I just thought that you and Eynon were lovers. It’s a bit strange, you living here with him, I mean.’
‘Why? We have ample servants to chaperone us, not to mention Binnie and Maura, who are our friends.’
‘But Eynon takes care of you, doesn’t he? I mean you can stay in his house whenever you like. Does he do all this out of friendship? Or does he offer you charity because he’s sorry for you?’
‘Don’t be absurd, I don’t need charity,’ Llinos said sharply and then regretted her tone, knowing she had allowed Georgina to breach her defences.
Georgina was persistent. ‘Perhaps you have grown accustomed to taking advantage of dear Eynon’s good nature.’
Llinos flinched. Georgina had exposed a raw spot. She had worked hard to tell herself that she was doing Eynon a favour but did she really earn all that Eynon was giving her? She was living in comfort at his expense and giving him nothing in return. She saw the situation clearly in that moment and it was not a good feeling.
‘Finish your tea.’ She spoke more abruptly than she intended. ‘I need to bathe and then I shall go to bed. I’m sorry if I seem inhospitable but I’m tired.’
Georgina rose to her feet, her face set. ‘Now you are cross with me. I can’t make you out, Llinos. You don’t want Eynon, or so you say. You tell me you are not lovers and yet you enjoy all this.’ Her hand encompassed the room. She moved towards the door.
‘I’m sorry to be blunt, but I think you are a liar.’ Her expression was hostile. ‘Why would any man be so generous unless he was being paid in some way or another?’ She smiled triumphantly. ‘The whole town is talking about you, you do realize that, don’t you?’
‘Oh, and what are they saying?’
‘They are saying that you are a kept woman and they are right, are they not?’
‘I work for a living!’ Llinos said. ‘Oh, go away, you wouldn’t understand!’ She opened the door. ‘Just leave me alone, Georgina. If you have any other questions, I suggest you address them to Eynon.’
The door slammed shut and Llinos closed her eyes in frustration. Damn Georgina! She had stirred up a cloud of questions in Llinos’s mind. Questions that must be faced and answered. Was she allowing herself to be a ‘kept woman’? Could she blame the townspeople for talking about her that way?
She drank her tea and moved to the window, her face resting against the cold pane. She stared into the garden, at the shifting shadows thrown by the clouds racing across the moon. She saw the flash of silver in the fountain as the water cascaded into the ornate bowl below.
She was not being fair to Eynon and she was not happy at home. Surely she could find the courage from somewhere to change what she did not like about her life?
She did not sleep very well that night. She sat hunched against the pillows in the high, narrow bed and tried to sort out her mixed thoughts.
By the time the morning light was slanting through the tall windows, one thing was clear, she could not live on Eynon’s charity for a moment longer.
Binnie sat up in bed and stared at the pink of the morning sky. Beside him, Maura lay, her hair spread around her face, her golden lashes touching her cheeks. She seemed like a beautiful stranger to him.
He might as well face it, he did not love her, he had never loved her. She had been his first taste of life, his first experience of love. But it had not been love at all, he recognized that now. What he felt for Maura had been nothing but the natural lust of a young man. He rose quickly and went into the small dressing-room. The water in the bowl was icy but he felt better when he’d splashed his face and hands with it. He looked into the mirror and saw a man old before his time. A married man.
Binnie stood for a moment, staring around him. He felt strangely removed from the everyday world. Panic engulfed him. He couldn’t be tied down, not yet. Maura was a wonderful girl but she cared nothing for ambition. She had no urge to explore new worlds. Maura was content to live and work and bear children and live a humdrum life in which there was no excitement. Could he settle to that for the rest of his life? He could not.
Hurriedly, he packed a change of clothes and took some money from the drawer in the bedroom cabinet. He tip-toed across the bedroom, trying to sort out his muddled thoughts.
He descended the small stairs at the back of the house, hearing familiar sounds from the kitchen. The maids were at work, the fires would be lit and a good hot breakfast would be waiting for him. He was a very lucky man – so everyone told him.
Silently, he entered the gracious hall and put his bag on the floor.
‘Morning, Binnie, how’s the happily married man?’ Eynon came into the hallway and stopped short.
‘I’m all right.’ Binnie had grown to like and respect Eynon. The man was not strong, he lived an indolent life, but he did not set himself above others.
Eynon even ate in the kitchen sitting at the same table as the cook and the maid. This was an unheard-of practice among the higher orders, but then Eynon was not like the other rich businessmen of the neighbourhood.
‘Where’s Llinos? I want to talk to her,’ Binnie said awkwardly, aware that his bag was standing near the door.
‘She’s left for the pottery already, she’s nothing if not keen to earn her own living. What’s wrong, Binnie? You look down in the mouth. Married bliss not all you hoped for?’ Eynon said.
‘It just don’t feel right somehow, being married, I mean.’
‘Doesn’t,’ Eynon corrected. ‘It doesn’t feel right.’ He smiled. ‘Marriage is a big step and, after all, you haven’t given yourself time to get used to it, have you?’
Binnie squared his shoulders, knowing he would have to break the news to Eynon that he was leaving. He thrust his hands into his pockets and stared down at the toe cap of his boot. ‘I’ve got to tell you something.’
Eynon sighed. ‘I think I know what you are going to say, I can see you’ve packed your bag. You’re leaving us. Don’t you think you are being a little impulsive. What about Maura and the baby? Shouldn’t you be thinking of them?’
‘They’ll be all right by here with you, won’t they? You won’t throw them out into the street or anything?’
‘No, of course not! But I can’t be here all the time, you know, and Maura needs a husband and the child needs a father, don’t you think?’
‘I can’t do it. She got a ring on her finger, the respectability she wanted,’ Binnie said. ‘Now I have to get away.’
‘All right, if you are determined to go I can’t stop you. Hold on here, would you?’ Eynon disappeared into his study and returned after a moment with a purse of money.
‘Call this your severance pay.’ He smiled but it did not reach his eyes. ‘It’s more than you’d ever get out of my father.’
As Binnie hurried from the house and began the long walk into town, his spirits rose. He was relieved to be away from Eynon’s house, more than relieved to be away from Maura. He felt suffocated by her love. He had made a mistake. He should not have married her. Well, it was behind him now.
Ahead of him, he caught sight of a familiar figure. He quickened his steps.
‘Llinos!’ he called. She hesitated for a moment and then stopped to wait for him. In h
er hand was a bag similar to his own.
‘Binnie, trust you to catch me out when I’m running away.’
‘So am I,’ Binnie said, not taking her seriously. ‘Running away, I mean. Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to America to find Joe, to find out if he loves me or not.’ She looked at him, her head on one side.
‘Llinos, you’re mad! No woman travels alone and especially not to America.’
‘Well, there has to be a first time for everything and I’m going. But you, Binnie, what do you think you are doing?’
‘I can’t stay, Llinos. Marriage is not right for me. I’m too young to settle down.’
‘You don’t mean it? Why, you’ve only just got married.’
He smiled. ‘I do mean it. As you say, there’s a first time for everything.’ He measured his steps to hers as Llinos began to walk down the hill. She glanced at him, her eyes shadowed.
‘I don’t know what to say, Binnie. I can’t agree that you are doing right to leave Maura. Why don’t you give yourself a chance to think about it?’
‘How long have you thought about going to America?’
‘Well, I realize I can’t keep living on Eynon’s charity.’
‘And when did that wonderful revelation come to you?’ Binnie persisted.
‘I scarcely slept all night. Georgina made me see sense. Oh, she was being spiteful but she was right, nonetheless.’
‘So you decided this morning to leave? So did I. I can’t live a lie for the rest of my life. In time I would come to hate Maura and all she stands for and she would hate me.’
The leafy lanes gave way to the roads at the edge of the town, where the shops and alley-ways sprawled in a confusion of cobbled streets and narrow courts.
Binnie kept step with her. ‘Can I come with you, to America, I mean? I don’t have a great deal of money. I could work my passage, though. I could help you to find Joe. Do you know where to start looking?’
Llinos nodded. ‘I know where he is. He wrote to me, this is all I have left of the letter; my father tried to burn it.’
Binnie took the paper and looked at the date. ‘It’s been a long time getting here. Joe could be on his way home by now.’
Llinos shook her head. ‘No. I don’t think so.’ She did not add that she would feel his presence, she would know without doubt if he was coming home.
Binnie looked at her in admiration. ‘Well, Llinos, I take my hat off to you, there’s not many women with a sense of adventure strong enough to carry them across oceans.’
‘Don’t praise me too soon, there’s a passage to be booked, a captain to persuade.’ She smiled. ‘Though I must admit it will be that much easier if we appear to be a couple. I understand captains are not keen on lone, unattached females being on board ship.’
Binnie stared ahead of him as they neared the entrance to the docks. The water was filled with ships, some with sails unfurled waiting for the outgoing tide. Others were laid at anchor. Men called to each other as they loaded cargo into the holds. It was a strange place full of unfamiliar smells and the coarse language of the sailors.
‘We should go to the shipping master’s hut,’ Llinos said. ‘Make enquiries about sailings to America.’
Binnie was grateful for Llinos’s clear-headed thinking. He followed her, taking her arm when she picked her way over boxes of fish and the upturned lobster pots that littered the dockside.
Llinos, with unerring instinct, found the building where the sailors and shipping line owners were filling in logs and booking out cargo. She took charge and Binnie watched her arrange matters with a briskness that would have done credit to a woman twice her age. Or any man for that matter.
Within the hour, Binnie found himself accompanying Llinos on board a four-masted barque heading out of Swansea harbour towards the Bristol Channel and the deep seas beyond. His new life was beginning and he embraced it with all the enthusiasm of a man freed from prison.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The river Missouri flowed sweetly, sunwarmed and golden. But summer was waning; it was time to go home. Joe walked the short distance to the stockade and stood at the door of the lodge where he had lived these past weeks with his mother.
In the clearing, the women were grouped around the fires baking clay pots beneath a covering of bark and branches and dung from the fields. It was all so different from the refinements of the Savage Pottery in Swansea and yet the end result was virtually the same. Jugs, basins, cooking vessels took shape, hardened by fire.
‘You are thinking of leaving, son?’ Mint appeared silently beside him, her buckskin boots making no sound on the soft ground. She smiled and her dark eyes glinted with merriment. ‘There is no need to leave, Wah-he-joe-tass-e-neen – your bride, your Firebird is coming to you.’
Joe looked at his mother, his eyes narrowing. It was true he had felt that Llinos was near. Was she here, on the plains of America or was it a wish-thought, a dream?’
Mint took his arm and guided him to the top of a small hill. ‘Out there, see the cloud of dust? It is your little white squaw come to claim you.’
He did not ask Mint how she knew these things. The senses of his people were honed to a point of sharpness that was beyond him. The instincts of the Mandan Indians were unspoilt by the march of progress. Their minds were not blunted by the rigours of education as Joe’s were.
‘You will marry here, after all, my son.’ Mint smiled as she caressed his cheek. ‘Your seed will return one day and live among my people. It is the wish of the spirits.’
Joe was suddenly afire. ‘I must go to meet her. Will you lend me a horse, Mint?’
‘Take the black stallion but don’t ride him too hard, he’s getting to be an old man. While I wait I’ll prepare a welcome. Sho Ka is bringing freshly baked bread and I’ll cook some buffalo meat. Don’t worry, we will make your white squaw welcome in our lodge.’
Joe looked down at his clothes, Indian clothes made of skins, decorated with beads, and wondered what Llinos would make of them.
‘She will be here within the hour. Make haste, son.’ Mint moved past him into the lodge, making a sweeping gesture with her hands. ‘Don’t stand there dreaming, go.’
Joe nodded his thanks to Black Crow as the brave swung wide the gate of the stockade. He had become friends with Sho Ka’s mate, the two men of similar ages but from different worlds. A bond had been forged between them that would never be broken.
As Joe rode the stallion across the plains he felt the softness of the breeze lifting his hair. He breathed in the scents of the plain, the sound of the buffalo, the calling of birds overhead. It was an open world, a world of big skies and great expanses of virgin land. But what would Llinos think of it?
He thought of her face, of her hair, her hands. His loins were on fire, he wanted Llinos, wanted to own her, to look into her soul. Now she had come to him nothing would keep them apart.
Llinos felt the thump of the horses’ hooves as though it was inside her head. The wagon jerked from side to side with bone-shaking abruptness. It was growing hot and the dust rose in choking clouds. It was a frightening land, a land where great creatures roamed, staring with malevolent eyes at the procession of horse and wagon.
The sea journey had taken longer than Llinos had anticipated but she had taken to sailing as if born to it. Binnie on the other hand spent the entire journey in his cabin sick to his stomach at every lurch of the ship.
When night folded around the vast seas, Llinos had questioned her wisdom in undertaking a journey into the unknown. What would she do when she landed on the American continent? She had only the address on Joe’s letter to guide her. Would she ever find the Mandan stockade?
In the sea port town of Troy, Llinos and Binnie had lodged for four days in a clean clapboard house near the docks. The plump landlady took her for Binnie’s sister and Llinos saw no need to go into complicated explanations.
In the evenings, at supper served around the homely table, Llinos and B
innie had discussed their journey with the other lodgers. When they left, it was with repeated directions, instructions and good wishes to speed them on their way.
The wagon jerked over a rock and Llinos blinked, adjusting her vision to scan the unending land. She flicked the reins, encouraging her horse to walk on. Up ahead, Binnie rode uncomfortably on the small piebald; they would need two animals, they had been told, in case one of them went lame.
She had been glad she had saved the wages she had earned at the Tawe Pottery, for once embarked on her journey she found she needed every penny she had.
As she travelled along the strange alien land, she felt a twinge of guilt that she had left Swansea without a word to her father. She had left Eynon a brief note but she knew they would both be bitterly hurt by her disappearance. But she would write, soon, and tell them she was well and happy.
Binnie shifted his position on the horse and Llinos smiled, he was not used to riding without the comfort of a saddle. But saddles cost money, money Llinos could not afford.
Binnie reined in his horse. ‘Perhaps I should give the poor creature a rest and ride in the wagon for a while,’ he said. Llinos nodded. ‘I can see that some poor creature needs a rest and it’s not necessarily the horse!’
Like a sudden mist that rises from a river, Llinos felt a strange sensation that Joe was near. She stood up in the wagon and stared ahead of her.
‘Wait, Binnie! There’s someone coming towards us,’ she said. ‘It’s a single rider.’
‘I see him, it looks like a native.’ His voice held a note of uncertainty and Llinos saw him finger the knife at his belt.
She felt her heart beat faster. Her hands gripped the side of the wagon.
‘Lord in heaven!’ Binnie exclaimed. ‘He’s riding like the wind. I hope the man means us no harm.’ He straightened and stared ahead of him, his eyes fixed on the swiftly moving horseman.
Llinos held her breath, she saw him clearly now, the dark hair flying, the strong lithe body at one with the big black horse he was riding.
‘Joe!’ Llinos shouted his name and the breeze took the words and cast them around the heavens and, as if in response, the rider raised his hand in greeting.
