by Owen Sheers
Branwen had been right about the two weeks. That was how long Ben wanted to wait before going up to look at the raven nests higher in the mountain. On Matthew’s second morning Ben took a letter he’d written to Seybridge explaining the delay into town and posted it back to London. Suddenly, for the first time since his hospitalisation Matthew had nothing to do. His days, expanded with the free, unfilled minutes, stretched out luxuriously before him. He slept late, listened to the radio broadcasts and read a novel he’d brought with him. Mostly, though, he walked, as best he could, up into the hills, helped Branwen with her daily chores or simply waited in some suntrap around the farm for when he could be with her again. On his third day, after he’d helped her usher the two dairy cows back out from the milking shed, he’d suggested they take a walk together instead.
‘Where to?’ she said.
‘Nowhere.’
‘Nowhere? Oh, and how exactly do we get there then?’
‘Alright, not nowhere,’ Matthew had admitted, his palms held up in surrender. ‘But just somewhere.’
‘Somewhere?’ She cocked her head on one side, mock suspicious.
‘Actually no,’ he corrected himself. ‘Not somewhere. Let’s just walk.’ He dropped his voice in a tone of exaggerated self-pity. ‘There was a time,’ he said, lowering his head too and putting his hand over the scar on his hip. ‘When I thought I never would.’
‘A cheap trick, Mr O’Connell,’ Branwen said as she strode away from him. ‘A dirty, cheap trick.’
‘But effective,’ Matthew said to himself as he followed her. ‘Very effective.’
It was on the way back from that walk they’d come across the trapped magpie, squawking and flapping inside the cage.
‘Poor thing,’ Branwen had said, keeping her distance.
The bird seemed to hear a hint of hope in her empathy, and with a two-legged hop it tried to fly out of the cage, beating its wings against the wire. Which was when she told him.
‘Tha’s how my heart was,’ she said quietly, not taking her eyes off the trapped bird. ‘That mornin’, when I left you. Like it was a bird in there. All the way up the hill, an’ for a good hour after too.’
She turned to face him then and saw he’d understood. They hadn’t said anything to each other for the past three days, not because they didn’t want to, or because they’d been too shy, but simply because they hadn’t needed to. They’d both known. She always, from the very first moment he’d stepped down those stairs, and he for certain when, later, they’d said goodnight and her eye had held his for what felt like a delicious eternity.
‘That song,’ Matthew said now, laying his hands gently on her shoulders and looking down at her. ‘The one you were singing before I came in. What’s it called?’
‘Ar Lan Y Môr,’ she said. ‘Down by the Sea.’ Then she shook her head and laughed, just as she had during their first conversation. ‘Silly really. Never even seen the sea.’
‘It’s a beautiful song,’ Matthew said, giving her shoulders a squeeze. ‘And you sing it beautifully.’
‘Thank you Mr O’Connell,’ she said, trying to joke her way past the sensations rising in her.
‘And if you’ll let me,’ he continued. ‘I’ll show you the sea. The Irish Sea. I’ll show it to you and then I’ll take you over it, to Ireland.’ He paused, breathing out a deep breath. ‘If you’ll let me?’
She looked away at the magpie in the cage, caught within its wires. ‘Yes,’ she said eventually. ‘I’d like that. Ar Lan Y Môr gyda ti. Down by the sea,’ she continued, looking back at him with the sky’s light in her eyes. ‘With you.’
That night was the first night Matthew and Branwen spent together, Branwen tiptoeing down the corridor to Matthew’s room at the other end of the farm. In the morning, before dawn, she crept back and slept for an hour more, missing the warmth of his body already, then rose to set about making breakfast as usual.
She needn’t have bothered with the creeping around. Ben had lived all his life in that farm and, with the weight of him, he’d come to know its every creak and groan, the timbre and pitch of every shifting sigh. He’d lain in his bed that night and, through his ears, had seen clearly the image of his sister’s small, bare feet padding down the narrow corridor. In the hour before dawn he’d heard them pad back. The sound of them made him roll lazily onto his front, his own big feet hanging off the end of the bed and an equally large grin buried in his pillow.
Ben still managed, somehow, to appear surprised when Branwen and Matthew sat him down at the kitchen table a week later and told him they were in love. Ben had mentioned over lunch that he thought he’d go and have a look at the raven nests the next day; that he thought it might be time. Once he’d gone off on his afternoon’s work, patching a piece of hedge in the paddock, Branwen and Matthew fell immediately into an urgent discussion. The way Matthew saw it, they had no choice. It was now or never. Once Ben had the birds he’d have to return to London. The country was at war, anything could happen. Matthew didn’t want to leave without her and she didn’t want to see him go. So they decided to tell Ben their plans that night and ask him, as her older brother, for his blessing. Which, after his strained mock surprise, is exactly what Ben gave them, drawing them to him and wrapping them in his huge arms, repeating again and again, ‘Wonderful news, wonderful news. Diolch i Dduw, diolch i Dduw,’ the words reverberating through his massive ribcage into their cheeks, pressed against his chest.
Holding Branwen’s hand, openly now, above the table, Matthew earnestly explained his intentions to Ben. He would never, he said, trying to appear more mature than he felt, dream of taking his sister away from him, away from her home without giving both of them his deepest commitment.
‘Before we leave,’ Matthew said, looking towards Branwen for courage, ‘we would like to marry.’ He looked into Ben’s broad, weather-beaten face. ‘I’d like to ask your permission Ben, if I may, to make your sister my wife.’
At first Ben said nothing. He just sat there, nodding his head slowly, as he did when impressed by a particularly fine ram at the local show. Then he smiled, a huge smile that took over his face. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course. I’ll speak to Davies the chapel tomorrow.’ Then he looked towards his uncharacteristically silent sister. ‘Bran?’
Their eyes met, and as they did Branwen gave a tight, almost imperceptible nod, as if any greater movement would spill something inside her.
‘Well,’ Ben said through a sigh. ‘There it is then. I’ll see if we can’t have it done the day after tomorrow, Friday.’ He stood up, straightening himself to his full height so his hair brushed against the lower beams of the ceiling, and extended his hand towards Matthew. ‘Congratulations Mr O’Connell,’ he said. ‘You’re engaged to the most beautiful woman in Wales. I might be biased, of course,’ he continued with a wink as Matthew shook his hand, ‘but there you go.’
‘Thank you,’ Matthew said. ‘Thank you Ben.’ And never before had he meant those words more.
The next day, as Ben rode over to see Davies the minister, Branwen spent hours fretting over leaving her brother to fend for himself. She made out lists of what he should buy, where, from whom and for how much. She wrote out what she did around the house for whoever Ben found to come and help him run the place. Matthew, meanwhile, did what he could to reassure her, while also gently advising her on what to pack for their journey which would take her not just to London, but Ireland too. He’d already decided he would resign from the PWE and take her home. London was no place for her, not with the war, and no place to bring a love as new as theirs either. The prospect of Ireland, meanwhile, had gained a sudden allure for Matthew. He had a strong desire for Branwen to know where he was from, in every way. With her at his side he would no longer be just the returning wounded soldier, the disgraced son. He would be a young husband bringing home his new wife. And Ireland would be his gift to Branwen too. The Irish hills, the smell and salt air of the sea, these were what he would give her. A new c
ountry yet familiar in its rhythms and colour to her own.
For Branwen, the idea of Ireland at once excited and scared her. Here she was, twenty-one and never left Wales, about to see London and then leave the whole island of Britain altogether, to travel over a sea she’d never seen to a country she only knew through the accent and stories of her fiancé.
When Ben came back later that afternoon he told them Davies would be expecting them at the old mountain chapel the next morning. They spent the rest of the day unpacking and airing Branwen’s mother’s wedding dress which had been folded away when she herself was just twenty-one for exactly this day, when her daughter would lift it out and hold it to the light once more. At the same time Ben rooted out an old suit of Evan’s which fitted Matthew just about well enough for him to wear it for the ceremony the next day.
That night Ben heard no padding of feet. Matthew and Branwen were, he was pleased to hear, sleeping as a young man and woman should on the eve of their wedding day. Apart and yet together, connected by threads of anxiety, excitement and absence running between them like fine-spun silver, all the way down the length of that night-filled corridor.
When Matthew arrived downstairs for breakfast the next morning he discovered what looked like a large box in the middle of the kitchen table, a grey woollen blanket draped heavily over its edges. Ben was standing beside the range, his face ruddy with early morning air, drinking a mug of tea.
‘There you go,’ he said with a nod towards the table. ‘Six raven chicks, as ordered. Strong little buggers too.’
He took a sip of his tea and Matthew saw his knuckles and the backs of his hands were marked with fresh scratches and cuts. Taking the chicks obviously hadn’t been the easiest of tasks.
‘Can I take a look?’ Matthew asked, approaching the table.
‘Just a peek,’ Ben said. ‘They’ve only jus’ settled. Don’t want to get ’em all worked up again.’
Matthew lifted one corner of the blanket and peered into the wire cage underneath. He could just make out the six chicks inside. Their oversized beaks seemed too heavy for their small heads as they huddled together on a bed of straw, their new feathers, although deeply black, somehow managing to shine with faint purples and blues too. The light from the lifted corner caused them to shuffle and shift, as if a breeze had blown across them, ruffling their feathers.
Matthew lowered the blanket again; silently thanking these birds for their sacrifice which had led him to his love. ‘Do you get white ones?’ he asked Ben. ‘Like in Branwen’s name?’
Ben raised his eyebrows in reply. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘They do turn up, sometimes. Only ever seen a couple myself mind, an’ only one of ’em was alive.’ He looked out of the kitchen window at the brightening spring day outside. ‘Beautiful to look at,’ he continued. ‘Beautiful birds. Completely white they were, pale beaks an’ legs even. Bright blue eyes, like opals. Beautiful.’
‘They sound it,’ Matthew said.
‘Too beautiful,’ Ben continued, looking back at him. ‘Never survive see?’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, their parents don’t feed them do they? Chick like that suddenly thrown up in the nest, lookin’ so different. Scares ’em I reckon. They kick ’em out, an’ then they starve soon enough.’ He took a sip from his tea. ‘Ravens jus’ meant to be black I suppose, an’ tha’s how it is. Shame though, ’cause like I say, they’re beautiful birds to see.’
‘Yes,’ Matthew said. ‘I imagine they are. I’d like to see one myself one day.’
‘Well, no need for that is there?’ Ben said, suddenly smiling and pushing himself off the range. ‘You’re marrying your own aren’t you? Talkin’ of which, I’d better get that horse of yours ready. If I know Davies ’e’ll have been waitin’ at the chapel since dawn.’ And with that Ben left the house, calling over his shoulder as he went, ‘Tell that bride of yours there’s a fresh pot on the range an’ some bacon on the shelf an’ this is the last time her brother’ll ever be makin’ her breakfast!’
Just a few hours later Matthew and Branwen were riding Mullie back to the farm as newly married man and wife. Ben rode beside them on his own horse, a sturdy Welsh mountain that he rode bareback, his long legs dangling down so far the toecaps of his boots were darkened damp from the mountain’s spring grasses. He’d decorated Mullie for the occasion, weaving early honeysuckle and late blossom through his bridle and mane, and sprigs of young hazel through his tail. Branwen rode sitting sideways before Matthew, an arm around his waist. Her mother’s wedding dress, which she’d pinned at the back to make it fit perfectly at the front, fell in layers of white silk over Mullie’s shoulder as far as his knee. Both man and wife still carried a deep ache within their chests, a hollowing resonance of the emotions stirred up by the ceremony that had joined their lives forever.
Davies had indeed been waiting at the chapel, a small, whitewashed building with one narrow, high-arched, unstained window. Though the chapel itself was simple, its setting gave it the grandeur of a cathedral, perched as it was beneath another sweep of mountain cutting a swathe of green through the high blue sky. A single yew tree spread its shade over a little graveyard of keening gravestones, laid irregularly across the sheep-cropped lawn like abandoned chessmen. Inside, the chapel’s thick walls held a sacred coolness, its still space ordered by just six lines of dark pews and a wooden, unadorned pulpit. Davies officiated in Welsh but shadowed his sentences with English, while Ben both gave his sister away and performed the role of Matthew’s best man, giving him their mother’s wedding ring with which to make his sister his wife. The ring hung so loose on Branwen’s slim finger she had to hold her hand in a fist all the way home. They sang one hymn together in English, ‘Guide me O thou great Jehovah’, then Ben and Branwen sang ‘Calon Lân’ in Welsh, her clear, high voice harmonising over his bass like a single lark over the broad back of the mountain.
When the new couple walked out of the chapel arm in arm, Matthew’s wrists showing long from Evan’s too-short suit, Ben showered them with more blossom before lifting his sister up into the arms of her new husband, already mounted on Mullie. The horse gave one of his snorts as she shifted herself into place, hopefully, Matthew thought, in approval rather than protest.
It was Ben who saw the smoke first, thin grey clouds of it blowing away from the farm’s chimney. He knew he’d left some coal smouldering in the range, and that the fire on the other side was unmade. There was no way the coal was making that smoke more than three hours later. He said nothing about it, but then Branwen saw it too. They exchanged a quick glance but remained silent, choosing to let Matthew continue with his reminiscence about how Mullie reminded him of a pony he’d had as a boy. As they neared the farm, however, the horses sliding their hooves down the slope at its back, Matthew noticed the smoke too.
‘Look,’ he said pointing at the grey wisps dragging away on the breeze. ‘Someone’s made the fire.’
‘Well,’ Ben said, employing a mock surprise for the second time in as many days. ‘So they have. Who can that be then?’
It was as if Evan had somehow heard his brother’s question. At that very moment his gaunt, tanned face appeared in the corner of one of the farm’s lower windows. As they rode closer it stayed there, hung within the glass like a slipped portrait.
‘Evan!’ As soon as she saw him Branwen was slipping off Mullie’s back and, gathering her dress in her hands, running towards the farm as fast as she could, crying out her brother’s name again and again. ‘Evan! Evan! Is that really you? Ble wyt ti wedi bod?’
Matthew watched as Evan’s face faded from the window then reappeared, attached to a lean body in uniform at the farm’s opened back door. Branwen ran straight into her brother’s arms and flung her own around his neck, squealing with joy. Evan’s stern expression, staring grimly over her shoulder, didn’t change. He just continued looking at Matthew, his hard grey eyes locked on this strange man wearing his own suit, bringing his sister home in their mother’s wedding dr
ess.
‘’Pwy yw’r dyn hwn?’ Evan asked Ben over his sister’s shoulder.
‘Siarada Saesneg nawr Evan,’ Ben said, dismounting from his horse.
‘Pam?’ Evan replied aggressively.
‘Because English is the language of your sister’s new husband,’ Ben replied in an overly cheerful manner.
Slipping her arms from his neck Branwen leant back to look at her younger brother, a hopeful, worried smile straining her delicate features.
Evan returned her look for a moment before deliberately placing his hands on her shoulders to push her, painfully slowly, away. ‘This how you welcome your brother home is it?’ he said in English. ‘By marrying a stranger without my knowin’?’
Ben went to hand Matthew the reins of his horse but Matthew, as Branwen’s new husband, wanted to be the one to heal this sudden wound. Passing Mullie’s reins to Ben he stepped forward and, slipping one hand around Branwen’s waist, extended his other towards her brother.
‘Let me introduce myself,’ he said. ‘This must be quite a surprise for you. I’m Matthew, Matthew O’Connell. It’s an honour to meet you.’
Evan didn’t take Matthew’s offered hand but just looked him hard in the face, the muscles around his jaw and eye sockets twitching like the flank of a pony under the touch of summer flies. Then his eyes dropped to Matthew’s other hand, resting on his sister’s hip, before coming back to meet his face again.
‘A neutral bloody Irishman too.’ The way he screwed that second word through his lips, as if it was painful to speak, made the word anything but neutral. Shaking his head he turned away to walk into the darkness of the house.
‘I’ll speak with him,’ Ben said, appearing at Matthew’s shoulder and giving him the reins of both horses. ‘Don’t worry bach,’ he said to Branwen, giving her arm a squeeze. ‘He’ll come round now, you’ll see.’
While Ben went inside to talk with his younger brother, Matthew and Branwen untacked the horses and put them out into the paddock to graze. As they did Matthew tried his best to reassure his young wife she shouldn’t worry too much about Evan’s reaction. They’d no idea he was coming home. If they had, they’d have waited of course. And, he told her, she shouldn’t take anything he says now, when he’s only just returned, with too much weight. ‘God knows,’ he said softly, holding her to him. ‘We all leave too much of ourselves behind in this war, and bring back more of it than we should too. He’ll have seen some things out there,’ he continued, stroking her hair (and done some things too no doubt, he’d thought to himself) ‘which can change a man for a while. But not for ever Bran, you’ll see now, not for ever. I promise.’
