Dead Man's Embers

by Mari Strachan

  The heat is intense out here on the open beach. It wraps itself around her arms and legs and torso as if it were a woollen quilt, enveloping and suffocating. Along the miles of beach to either side of them the air shimmers. Figures appear in the haze like mirages, daubs of watery paint in a desert. The sea itself, monstrous on this beach in winter with its roaring, heaving waves, is becalmed, barely a ripple showing on its surface, reflecting the sky and the distant hills of Lln in its depth. A perfect mirror image; it is hard to tell what is real from what is not.

  ‘I always forget how immense the sea seems,’ Gwydion says. ‘It’s enclosed somehow at Aberystwyth. But here,’ he encompasses the bay with his open arms, ‘here you could almost imagine seeing Ireland on a clear day. It’s not so far away, is it, Non?’

  ‘Do you remember me telling you the story of Brân taking his warriors over the sea to Ireland to rescue Branwen?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ Gwydion says. ‘I can’t imagine what made Taid name Mam after her, though. She wouldn’t stand for that sort of carry-on!’

  Non laughs at the expression on Gwydion’s face. No, Branwen would have turned the tables on anyone who tried to harm her or her children. Especially her children. King or no king. Non was always somewhat in awe of her sister, a little scared of her.

  ‘But she has a generous heart,’ she says. ‘Not many would have taken in a ten-year-old like me when our father died. I think I must have been a handful, left to do as I liked by Tada. Poor Branwen.’

  ‘I expect she enjoyed the challenge,’ Gwydion says. ‘But, Non – talking of names has reminded me – do you remember Owen, the herbalist you knew in Aberystwyth during the War?’

  Non feels a warmth in her face that has nothing to do with the strength of the sun. She turns away from Gwydion to look out to sea, fanning herself with her hand as if it might raise a breeze to cool her. ‘Of course,’ she says, and is amazed at how calm her voice sounds.

  ‘We were both at a meeting at the National Library a few weeks ago, he came up to me and asked if I knew you – don’t you think that’s odd? I don’t think I look like you, do I? Anyway, we chatted and I mentioned I was coming up to stay. He asked to be remembered to you. He said you were well-named – Rhiannon the enchantress.’

  She is too agitated to laugh at such a foolish thing. Not even Davey in his courting days had called her an enchantress.

  ‘He said you’d tamed a bird just like your namesake. Though she tamed a flock of them, didn’t she? Anyway, I didn’t know you had a tame bird any more than I knew you had a tame suitor, Non.’

  She knows Gwydion is teasing her, he was always a tease. But it is too close. Owen is her shameful secret; a secret that she has been able to push into the farthest reaches of her mind. No conversation is safe, she thinks, there are twists and turns you do not see until it is too late. She swallows hard and turns back to Gwydion.

  ‘Herman,’ she says, ‘he meant Herman. He’s not exactly tame, is he? You know, the crow chick Lizzie German’s husband gave me just before the War. I named it after him. Don’t you remember? He had a broken wing and I mended it. They took him away because he was German and Lizzie never saw him again. He died in one of those internment camps on the Isle of Man. Poor Herman.’ She sees the confusion on Gwydion’s face. ‘Not the bird, the man. He was the kindest of men. But Herman the crow still comes to visit us.’

  ‘So, can he talk? Herman?’ Gwydion says.

  ‘Of course he can.’ She gives a laugh that sounds tinkling and false to her ears. ‘But I’m the only one who can understand him.’

  Gwydion grins down at her. He has grown so tall, but the boy is still there in the man’s face. She puts her hand on his cheek.

  ‘Non,’ he says, the grin gone now, his face serious. ‘I have something to tell you. And a favour to ask.’

  A buzz of alarm runs through her at the gravity in his voice, her heart beats faster. Is it this that caused her to feel full of foreboding when she woke this morning?

  ‘That camp you just mentioned – where Lizzie German’s Herman was sent? – it wasn’t the only sort of camp people were sent to during the War, you know. Did you hear of the camp at Frongoch? Near Bala?’

  She didn’t know there had been such a place so close. She shakes her head.

  ‘They had German prisoners of war there to begin with, but they cleared them out and the English Government brought all the Irish freedom fighters they feared over after the Easter Rising and locked them up there – nearly two thousand of them. Plonk in the middle of Wales so no one thought ill of the English for it. And we let them do it, Non.’ His fist hits the open palm of his other hand.

  Non has never seen him so agitated, so serious; her Gwydion made light of everything. His eyes seem to flash at her and she steps back.

  ‘Aoife’s cousin was there, that’s how I came to know about it, I went there with her to see the place. He was locked away for standing up for his countrymen’s rights, as if he was a common criminal. It makes me hot with shame to think about it.’

  Non is ashamed that she knows nothing about this atrocity. She puts out a restraining hand, but he ignores it, walking back and forth on the hard sand at the edge of the sea – the sea on which the sun will later lay down a red-gold path to Ireland – as if he were in a room, pacing.

  ‘Aoife’s father finishes at Aber this summer,’ he says. ‘And I’m going back to Ireland with them, Non. Aoife and I will be married and I’ll help in Ireland’s fight for real independence. We could take lessons from the Irish, Non. We Welsh, we’re too subservient, we put up with everything that’s thrown at us.’

  He reminds her of his grandfather. Her memory of her father is a child’s, and she sees him now, pacing up and down in their large, cold kitchen where the fire in the range always seemed to have just gone out because he had forgotten to feed it, always heated about some political or moral question or other, and all the more heated, she realises now, for being powerless to do anything about it.

  ‘And the favour?’ is all she can think of to say. Gwydion has made up his mind and nothing can sway him from his course.

  At that, the man disappears and the boy returns, the boy who would always call for Non if he had fallen or if one of his sisters had stolen his toy away from him. And the boy says, ‘Will you talk to Mam for me, Non? You know what she’s like. Will you stand up for me?’

  Time passes, the world revolves, the tide ebbs and flows. She puts her hand on his cheek once more. ‘No, Gwydion,’ she says. ‘If you’re man enough to fight battles for others, you’re man enough to fight your own.’

  8

  Non thinks the heat will surely kill her, it will squeeze her heart until it stops beating and bursts. She has taken an extra dark drop again this morning but it is not enough. Meg complains incessantly, of the heat, of the work, of the unfairness of being a girl. Non cannot disagree with Meg; it is hot, the work is hard whatever the weather, it is unfair that it should be the women who have to do it. But she is unable to look into the future and promise Meg that one day men will be doing women’s work the way women did men’s work during the War. Somehow, it does not seem likely.

  It is surely pleasanter in the garden, so she shoos Meg out to pick beans and pull potatoes and carrots, to gather eggs from beneath the hens if the heat has not stopped them laying altogether, to fetch the milk from the earthen store Davey has built in the shade of the garden wall to give her somewhere cool to keep the milk and the butter and the cheese. With the hem of her apron she wipes away the sweat that is stinging her eyes before taking the roast from the oven to baste it and return it to carry on cooking.

  ‘Mint,’ she says to Meg who comes through the kitchen door with her bounty. ‘We need mint for the sauce to have with the lamb.’

  ‘It’s hotter in the garden than it is in the house.’ Meg pours water from the pitcher into the bowl on the small table by the door and splashes her face with it. ‘At least it was cool in chapel this morning. Half the peo
ple fell asleep. Nain was snoring.’ The memory makes her giggle. ‘But I’d better not say it when she’s here. She and Taid are coming for their dinner, are they?’

  ‘As usual,’ Non says. And when did that become usual? Was it after Billy died? Before that, Mrs Davies would never deign to eat anything that Non prepared. And she would not allow Non to send Billy any of her herbal preparations to alleviate the symptoms of his illness. Non was never fond of Billy, there was something about him that made her flesh creep, but he was her husband’s brother, and that was that, it seemed. He worked so hard, Billy, at avoiding being recruited, faked illnesses and conditions with his mother’s connivance that she, Non, knew he did not have, only to die ingloriously of influenza after the War was over. In Manchester. No one knew what he was doing in Manchester. Non had not been brought up a believer but she sometimes thought that Billy had suffered a divine retribution of some sort. Now, she hopes Mrs Davies had given up the strange idea she had conceived that Billy’s name should be on the town’s war memorial as a casualty of the influenza brought back by the returning soldiers.

  ‘Mint,’ Meg says, thrusting a bunch of it at her. ‘And I’m not doing anything else.’

  Non inhales the scent of the mint. ‘Oh, Meg,’ she says, ‘just smell the coolness coming from it.’

  ‘Nothing is cool,’ Meg says. ‘Absolutely nothing. We’ll all roast to death before we get to eat the roast.’

  She is pleased with that, Non thinks, as Meg forgets her threat to do nothing and takes the tablecloth and cutlery through into the dining room. She hears her open the window though there is no breath of air to be had to blow through the room.

  Meg returns briefly into the heat of the kitchen. ‘And,’ she says, ‘the stink from Maggie Ellis’s closet is dreadful. She says it’s your fault, you forgot to pick whatever it was you promised her to put in there yesterday.’

  ‘How can you expect us to eat hot food in this heat, Rhiannon?’ Mrs Davies seems hotter than anyone else, if such a thing is possible. It does not improve her temper.

  ‘Mother,’ Davey says, ‘you’d complain just as much if we’d given you cold food for your Sunday dinner.’

  Non is grateful that he allies himself with her. It is always a battle with Catherine Davies. She would prefer to remain neutral; she is not sure what particular cause this battle is being fought over. Some kind of supremacy, no doubt. Is that not what all battles are about?

  Catherine Davies fans herself with her napkin. Non thinks, Bite your tongue, hold your breath and count to twenty. The sickness that only she can see eating at Catherine Davies must affect the way the woman thinks and behaves. Surely? And her mother-in-law has suffered, Maggie Ellis was right. Billy was the child she adored. To the neglect of her other three children, admittedly, but still . . . And now old William Davies, who had been Non’s ally through all the dark days of the War, is slipping away from them into a world of his own. When did that begin? Was that, too, a result of Billy’s death? William Davies loved his children equally, except he maybe loved Billy a little less. Non is sure he would have liked to have seen more of his daughters. Perhaps when this great heat has run its course and the days and nights have become bearable again, she will write to her sisters-in-law, Bess and Katie, far away in the south, to see if they can have a family gathering. Davey would like that. The old Davey would have liked that, she corrects herself.

  ‘And how long are you intending to stay, young man?’ Mrs Davies turns to Gwydion as she speaks.

  ‘Until Non and Davey throw me out,’ he replies, with a smile. But Gwydion’s charm leaves Mrs Davies unmoved, exactly as it did when he last met her.

  ‘That contraption of yours made a commotion when it arrived. It disturbed us all.’ Mrs Davies purses her lips into what Wil calls her cat’s-bottom mouth. Non buries her mouth in her napkin at the thought.

  ‘I borrowed it from my professor,’ Gwydion says, but Mrs Davies continues to be unimpressed.

  ‘Davey tells me . . .’ She dabs delicately at her mouth with her napkin as if she is about to impart something that might soil her lips. ‘Yes, he tells me that you are going to be doing some sort of work for this . . . person that lives in Wern Fawr.’ She leans towards Gwydion slightly and lowers her voice. ‘He is a socialist, you know. Would throw out Lloyd George like that.’ She flicks her fingers at Gwydion.

  ‘So would I,’ Gwydion says. ‘But I’m only going to catalogue Davison’s library for him, unfortunately, not help him plot the overthrow of the Government.’

  Catherine Davies gasps and rears back from him. ‘You’re not one of these socialists, are you?’ She fans herself vigorously.

  ‘No,’ he replies. ‘If anything, I’m a nationalist. I don’t think we should have an English Government leading us into wars and other mischief that have nothing to do with us.’

  A look of utter horror appears on Catherine Davies’s face. She turns to her son. ‘Davey?’ she says, and waits for an explanation.

  Wil jumps in. ‘Tada’s a socialist, too, Nain, didn’t you know? He and Ianto Hughes are setting up a Labour Party branch right here in town.’

  Catherine Davies recoups. ‘Nonsense,’ she says, and carries on eating her dinner, or her luncheon as she had explained to Non she preferred to call it, using the English word.

  The lull does not last long. Davey lays down his knife and fork and leans towards his mother across the table. ‘Well, no, Mother,’ he says. ‘Not nonsense. Though I’m not sure I’d call Davison a socialist. Anarchist, maybe?’

  His mother stares at him. She chews her mouthful of food rapidly and swallows it with a gulp. ‘Anarchist?’ She looks around the table. ‘Aren’t they Bolsheviks? Is he a Bolshevik?’ She begins to fan herself again, her napkin dipping into the gravy on her plate and splattering the tablecloth with brown specks. ‘They kill their betters, the Bolsheviks. I’ll never feel safe again, never. A Bolshevik!’

  ‘He’s not a Bolshevik, Mrs Davies.’ Gwydion makes the mistake of laughing at her.

  Catherine Davies narrows her eyes at him. ‘I don’t want him mentioned in my presence, whatever he is – or isn’t.’

  ‘Listen, Mother.’ Davey looks at everyone around the table, as if he is addressing them all.

  Non puts down her own knife and fork; she can’t keep up the pretence of eating. What is Davey doing?

  ‘The world is changing. It has changed,’ Davey says. ‘Working people aren’t going to put up with the sorts of conditions they had before the War. We have to . . . to band together, and look after each other.’

  ‘No one knows better than I that the world is changing. I, who have lost so, so much.’ The napkin comes into play again as Catherine Davies dabs her eyes with it.

  Gwydion turns slightly in his chair so that he faces Davey. Osian is seated between them. Over the boy’s head Gwydion says, ‘You think the workers in England care about the workers in Wales, Davey?’

  ‘They’ve more in common with us than with their own upper classes, Gwydion. I saw that over in France. Think about it.’

  ‘Well, you have the advantage, Davey. You were there. But those aren’t the stories I’ve heard. What about the bigotry? What about the name-calling? What about not being able to write home in Welsh?’

  Davey shrugs. ‘That was ignorance, not malice, Gwydion.’

  Gwydion shakes his head. ‘The English have bled us dry, Davey. And you think they’re going to stop? Hah!’ He hits the table with the flat of his hand, causing everyone except Osian to jump. Osian is intent on his food and oblivious to the argument raging above his head.

  ‘Can I have the rest of these potatoes if no one else wants them, Non?’ Wil, too, has been eating steadily. ‘And some more meat?’

  Non nods at him. She looks at Meg who is sitting with folded arms, her plate clean and pushed to the side. She gives her a little conspiratorial shrug but Meg ignores her.

  ‘It’s time we took our fate into our own hands, Davey. The Irish are doing it. So shou
ld we.’

  ‘It won’t work for them,’ Davey says. ‘And it wouldn’t work for us. What would we gain?’

  ‘Freedom?’ Gwydion says. ‘Self-respect?’

  ‘They’re just words,’ Davey says. ‘They don’t mean anything. Solidarity between working men of all nations, Gwydion – can’t you see the strength it would give us?’ He turns around in his chair to the bureau behind him and rummages inside the top until he brings out a fat notebook, which he waves at Gwydion.

  ‘You’re saying that working men aren’t as greedy as their employers,’ Gwydion says, ignoring the book being shown him. ‘There’s always going to be someone who wants more than his fair share.’

  Old William Davies rouses himself out of whatever alternative world he occupies and bangs on the table with his knife. ‘Hear, hear,’ he calls, but there is no telling who or what he is agreeing with.

  Gwydion picks up his fork from the table and wags it at Davey as he orders his thoughts, and Davey jabs his forefinger at one of the pages in his notebook and shouts, ‘Clause Four, Gwydion. Clause Four. It says it all. Listen . . .’ He begins to read, in English, from his notebook. ‘To secure for the workers by hand or by brain – see, it means you, too, Gwydion – the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution . . .’

  As Davey reads on panic surges through Non. How will this end? Fisticuffs? She gulps down a hysterical giggle. She wants to join in the argument, she wants to shout at them to be quiet, she wants to push Catherine Davies off the chair where she sits like a martyr, she wants to smack Meg for her insolent stare. When Davey pauses, she says, ‘Is anyone going to have some pudding?’

  9

  After an afternoon spent under the shade of the butterfly tree in the garden Non has recovered. Supper is cold lamb and bread and butter, and salad leaves for those who want them, and they all seem lost in their own thoughts during the meal. When she leans over Davey to clear away his supper plate the strong smell of his father’s pipe tobacco rises from his hair and clothes and makes her cough. Though William Davies forgets many things, he never forgets his pipe of tobacco after his meals.