Disturbing Ground

by Priscilla Masters

  She replied stiffly. “Fine, and you?”

  “Oh - missing the old man. You know. We were pretty close.” He looked down at his feet and Megan could have sworn he meant what he said. Maybe he really did miss his father.

  Smithson’s face looked tired. The red veins on his cheek stood out more than before. He wrapped his coat tightly around him. “Better go then. See you, Megan.”

  She left Triagwn House feeling more confused than ever.

  Driving home she switched her car radio off. She wanted to think. Two people were dead, almost certainly three. Stefan Parker had been missing now for eight days.

  Someone was behind all this. Someone more strange than Esther Magellan and more insane than Bianca.

  And the thought that had crossed her mind as she had watched Arwel Smithson stride across the gravel and disappear inside Triagwn was that he was a man who would be capable of putting a sick animal down if it was of no further use. If a sick animal, why not a sick human? Or a sickly one?

  Chapter 21

  But even major dramas are forgotten. Newspapers move on to other stories. With no new angle and nothing different with which to headline their story the local newspapers began to lose interest. Megan watched Stefan’s name move from headlines to sidelines and by the end of November the boy’s disappearance had been relegated to one short column on page four. And even that feature was not solid fact but a vague sighting in Blackpool.

  And from Alun she had heard nothing. But knowing him as well as she did she knew he would be better left alone. He never had been someone who liked to be pushed. His involvement would be with the official police investigation. He was better deployed there.

  Her line must be another one.

  She decided to speak to Barbara Watkins again.

  It was a Thursday, two days before the end of the month. It had been eerily quiet in the surgery so Megan had finished by midday with no firm plans for the afternoon. She had no evening surgery. As she left the building, the sun was hidden behind a band of thick grey cloud but across the valley she could see where the cloud ended and blue sky began. It would be a good day to climb the mountain. She drove home impatiently, pulled her hiking boots from the cupboard, cleaned and ready for action, found her fleece and orange kagoul, ran upstairs and slipped into a pair of comfortable, stretch jeans. She caught sight of her face in the mirror and was surprised at how eager she looked.

  Eager for what? To find the truth? For a walk? Eager for life?

  Whatever. She slicked some lipstick on and drove back down the valley.

  She found Barbara in the garden, clearing debris from the drains, deaf and blind to Megan’s approach, startling like a jack-in-the-box when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” Megan said, taken aback. “I didn’t mean to surprise you.”

  Barbara looked embarrassed. “Oh, normally I’m not so jumpy but … “For the first time ever Megan read fear in the retired schoolmistress’ eyes. She who had faced rebellious teenagers and angry parents for years looked anxious.

  “It’s with you telling me all those stories. It’s set my mind thinking. And now Stefan Parker. Megan,” she appealed, “what is going on?”

  Megan linked arms with her. “I thought we might go for a walk,” she said. “It’s easier to talk when you’re active, isn’t it?”

  “All right.” Barbara welcomed the idea. “Let me just get ready then.”

  The intial climb was a steep one and they were puffed out when they reached the ridge. They sat down in a small hollow, out of the wind. Megan took a bottle of water from her rucksack and they both swigged at it in turn. Below them was the town, squashed into the narrow valley, slate roofs in tight lines with a snake of traffic between. There was little noise. The wind up here whistled softly through its teeth and blotted out the town’s synthetic sounds.

  They both stared around for a while and then Barbara spoke. “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it, that anyone could vanish from a place like this. I mean there’s only one way out. Down the valley. If you keep going up you simply reach the mountains and they never did build a road straight over.”

  Megan knew exactly what she was saying. It was harder for people to disappear from Llancloudy than from another place. In a way it was almost an island, joined only by the narrowest of isthmuses - the width of a road, a narrow river and a railway line. There was one road in and one road out. It wasn’t like a city or a town where people could permeate to another place. It was cut off, practically sealed in.

  And yet… She glanced at Barbara and knew her thoughts were moving in exactly the same trajectory.

  “Tell me about the real Bleddyn Hughes. The one you remember.”

  Barbara was unsurprised at the question. She thought for a moment, her face screwed up in concentration. “Quiet, polite and thoughtful.” She closed her eyes. “The sort of person who bought birthday cards. With flowers on. Gentle. He had very beautiful hands, I remember. Long, slim fingers. And a lovely speaking voice. He was fond of poetry. Would read it aloud to the children.” She opened her eyes with a jerk. “Especially a Hood poem. Great favourite of his. The Bridge of Sighs.”

  One more unfortunate

  Weary of breath,

  Rashly importunate

  Gone to her death.

  “I can picture him now, reciting it. I thought it a very inappropriate poem for children but there you are. He had a lovely voice. Quite musical it was. Not much of an accent. He was a Swansea man.” She turned and looked at Megan. “It’s funny, isn’t it. The papers put a different angle on him; hinted at unsavoury habits, his sexuality. It had made me forget. I liked him. He seemed a decent man. But …” She was frowning. “Perhaps he was not. Perhaps he was a deceiver. Papers distort things but sometimes they put a finger right on the pulse. Sometimes they are very perceptive.”

  Megan nodded.

  “There was such a lot of gossip when he went. Silly ugly gossip really. Great clumps of people gathered outside the chippy or the Co-op. Lots of rumours must have started there. I expect Bianca would listen. And that’s what started her threading bits together. So many tales flew around but even now I don’t know whether they were true. Whether any of it was true. No one came forward and said anything definite. Not after he’d gone.” Her face was puckered with concern. “How do we know what to believe?”

  “Perhaps it was easier to believe he was gay and had gone to be with like friends rather than face the truth and the prejudices of Llancloudy.”

  “Maybe.” Barbara was getting to her feet. “Maybe. Perhaps we’ll never know what really happened to any of them.”

  They carried on with their climb. And the head of the valley came into view, the pen and the huge winding wheel of the mine which still watched over Llancloudy.

  Derelict buildings scarred the coal yards though the mines were long since shut. However hard they tried to wash the coal away from the soil of South Wales, the scars would always be there, in the irregular line of the hills, in the grassed-over slag heaps, in the pool the locals called the Slaggy Pool. Megan suddenly felt agitated.

  “It’s in the ground. Underneath our feet.”

  Smithson was right. All the old mine workings still existed. The shafts and tunnels were still there, beneath the feet of the twenty-first century. And as though she could sense the vanished as she trod over their heads she felt afraid. She was beginning to see too much. She was seeing Llancloudy through Bianca’s eyes, the past as vivid as the present, dead souls mingling with the living. A child that chattered, a little girl who probably dropped her chip papers on the floor, a trio of childish vandals separated by ten years.

  But the pathologist was prepared to believe that Geraint Smithson had been murdered. And she could believe his son could have “finished him off”. For expediency? Because his father had become an inconvenience? An embarrassment even? Why had Arwel waited for her the last time she had visited Triagwn? Megan knew. He must have known that she had refused to i
ssue the death certificate. He had been gauging her reaction, wondering how much she guessed.

  But while she could picture Arwel pressing a pillow to his father’s face, could she really believe he had murdered Bianca? She had a vision of Smithson’s cottage. Isolated enough to be able to keep someone prisoner for a day and a half. Near to the tumbled gryphon statue whose claw had found its way into Bianca, the collector’s, pocket. Had she wandered towards the Woodman’s Cottage and said something which had led Arwel to believe she knew something about the disappearances?

  “What are you thinking?” Barbara’s voice sliced through her thoughts. And well as she knew her old teacher she could not share them all.

  “I was wondering,” she said slowly, “about Stefan.”

  Barbara nodded. “Me too,” she said. “I think he’s gone.”

  Megan watched her, surprised.

  “Out of the valley?”

  “Where else?” Barbara’s hand was on her arm. “Where else could he be? Llancloudy isn’t that big a place. You know what it’s like here. We’re all on top of one another. The places that aren’t built on are old slag heaps, still sliding down towards the river, or crumbling into derelict mine workings. There isn’t anywhere to hide him. And people have looked everywhere. Everywhere.” She took the bottle of water from Megan, swigged at it and wiped her mouth with a rough, brusque action.

  “So where is he?”

  Involuntarily they both swivelled around to look at the winding wheel. Barbara shivered. “Not down there,” she said. “Not down there.”

  But it was the only place.

  They both gazed around the wide sweep of the valley beneath the rolling clouds which would, later in the night, surely release more icy rain. Maybe even some snow. There was a cruel nip in the air that would bring all the bronchitics to the surgery, needing their antibiotics. Doctors’ surgeries reflect the seasons in disease. Summer brings pollen suffererers, the winter the asthmatics, bronchitics and the old, trying to fend off death with a flu jab.

  There was the distant sound of sheep bleating. Barbara smiled. “My mam always used to say Welsh sheep sounded as though they were moaning about something. The heat, the cold, the wet, the dry. Always something to complain about she used to say. But me, I don’t think they are complaining at all. They’re just communicating. Though what they’re saying is anybody’s guess.” She pointed towards a flattened patch between the sheep and the trees. Paler than the rest with a fire scar at its centre. “When I was a girl, an old tramp lived in a tin caravan halfway up there. I suppose he was a sort of shepherd. Certainly he had a dog. A lovely black and white Welsh Border collie. Such an intelligent animal it was. Used to round up the sheep in minutes however far they’d strayed. I used to take the dog the bones after the Sunday joint and, for his master, the shepherd cakes my mother had baked. Ginger cake, Teisen Lap, Welsh cakes sometimes. He was so grateful. Used to ram them in his mouth as though he was in danger of starving to death. Maybe he was. He was awful thin. Then one day I went and he was lying in his bunk, grey-faced, hardly breathing. I didn’t know what to do, Megan. I dropped the bones and the cakes and ran all the way home. I didn’t have a clue. I felt so helpless. Terrible thing, ignorance is.” Her eyes were trained to the pale green spot on the side of the hill. “It was a promise I made to myself that I would not be ignorant again. I enrolled in a First Aid course run by the St John’s Ambulance down in Bridgend. You could say, Megan,” her eyes were fixed on the side of the mountain, “that this one event was the reason I became a teacher. So I could prevent other people from being ignorant. The only way out of these valleys is through education. Otherwise you don’t get the choice. It’s all right for you, Megan. You elected to return and bring your knowledge with you to help the valleys people. You wanted to be the voice of people who had lost theirs. But for some they have no option but to stay. And that’s one of the reasons people get frustrated and we have problems with our young. Boredom and ignorance are our enemies.”

  “And if they want to remain in their ignorant state?” Megan tried to ask the question lightly but she was disturbed by Barbara’s words and even more by its unbending underlying attitude. You could not force people to learn. It was not possible. Like pigs in mud, some people preferred to wallow in their ignorance.

  Barbara’s reply was an angry jerk of her shoulders.

  So Megan moved back to her story. “And the tramp?”

  “He’d had a heart attack. Dad came back with me while my mam fetched the doctor. He gave my old friend an injection into his arm and he was sent to the hospital. He was alright - for a year or two anyway. He was an old man, Megan. And old people have to die sometimes.”

  Megan straightened. “But not the young, Barbara. Not the young.”

  “I can’t think Stefan’s dead, Megan.”

  “And Rhiann Hughes and Marie Walker, Neil and George?”

  Barbara had no answer.

  “Come on.” She stood up. “Let’s walk. We’ve still an hour left of daylight.”

  They followed the sheep path. Narrow and shorn of grass by the nibbling animals. Now they were forced to walk in single file. It stopped them talking. And Megan was glad. It allowed her to think.

  She dreamed of a gentle man with long, slim fingers who had loved the same poem as she and whose disappearance had been explained by ugly rumour. She knew what he looked like from the newspaper photographs; dark, lugubrious eyes, a thin, rather weak mouth suggesting hesitancy and a lack of confidence, hair cut long and in an old fashioned, square, sideburned style. In none of the newspaper pictures had she seen his hands. And she had never heard his voice but she could almost hear it, a soft, Swansea voice reciting …

  Take her up Tenderly.

  They walked in silence for ten, fifteen minutes.

  Then Barbara caught up with her, speaking into her face. “Is it even conceivable that Bianca could have been right?” She frowned. “Who is mad, Megan, Bianca for imagining such a thing, you and I for wondering whether it’s the truth? The police for failing to connect the crimes? Was Bianca the only one with insight?”

  Which she communicated with Smithson?

  And which Smithson believed? Did you need a mind which was not quite normal to understand what lay at the centre of this mystery?

  Megan felt inadequate. “I don’t know. I don’t know… Possibly.” She didn’t know what to say.

  Lights were being switched on below in the valley. Only the rounded tops of the mountains were still dark. The lamp-posts formed bright lines, like runways. If she jumped she could fly. And then land.

  Daylight was fading. Colours were damped down for the night. Like a coal fire. They threaded their way silently down the hill following yet another of the sheep paths, emerging near the rugby pitch.

  As they reached Barbara’s front door she spoke. “I hope … I wish …”

  Megan knew exactly what she wished. That none of it had happened. That it really had been a figment of Bianca’s distorting mind. Maybe it was. It was what she wanted to believe too.

  “Come in for a cup of tea,” Barbara said warmly. “And I’ve made a Teisen Lap. It’ll save you cooking when you get home.”

  It was this practical streak, Megan reflected, which had made Barbara such a good headmistress. Her practical housekeeping.

  The atmosphere inside was homey, organised, still fragrant with lingering baking smells, clean and traditional. They sat and drank tea and skirted round the main issues. Neither of them mentioned Stefan Parker - or Bianca - or anyone else who would have broken the spell. Megan felt lulled into a sense of well-being. All was right with the world. And Llancloudy in particular.

  It was what she wanted to believe.

  She kissed Barbara goodbye and climbed into her Calibra, still with that warmth pervading.

  But it didn’t last.

  She bought a paper on the way home and read, on page four, that the body of a young boy found floating in the mouth of the Bristol Channel had be
en ruled out as being the body of the missing boy, Stefan Parker. A couple were understood to be travelling down from Yorkshire for purposes of identification.

  She tore page four out, folded it up and tossed it in the back of the car.

  Halfway home she was suddenly seized with curiosity. Barbara had sparked it off, colouring in the picture she had had of Bleddyn Hughes, breathing life into the man, making her feel as though she knew him - even if only for the reason that they both enjoyed the same poem. She had memorised the address at which he had once lived. And forty-five Bethesda Street was on her way home; an uncompromising row of dirty stone terraced houses probably built at a period just before the First World War, when piety was more important than sanitation and the men trooped home late from the pits to clean themselves in a tin bath in front of the fire. She turned in to the right of the enormous chapel. There was a parking space blocked off with a traffic cone right in front of number forty-five beneath a Neighbourhood Watch sign fixed to a lamp-posts. She shifted the cone and manoevered her car between a fourteen-year-old Fiesta and a blue Toyota Celica with a personalised numberplate. Cariad, darling. She locked her car door, threaded round the front and read the numberplate again - only to feel cheated. It didn’t read Cariad at all. On closer inspection it was simply a trick. CAR14D. But it was a nice car.

  She knocked on the door feeling a silly, vague disappointment at the mild deceit. And knocked again, wondering. Thirty years later would anyone in this street remember the disappearance of a nondescript school teacher? Even in the valleys where memories were so long that elephants appeared amnesiac in comparison.

  Grubby net curtains twitched. An old man glared out at her with frank hostility. He was shouting something. Banging at the window. She recognised him straight away. It was the angry man at Bianca’s funeral … Caspian Driver’s visitor … Rumpelstilskin. He must have recognised her but he was scowling. She smiled at him. He glared back at her and shook his fist. She was taken aback.