Dead Man's Embers

by Mari Strachan

  Non hopes that the David Morris is well stocked when it sails. Wil can eat enough for six men by himself.

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Meg sounds so smug and pleased with herself that Wil and Gwydion pause with their bread and jam part way to their mouths and look at her.

  ‘Who?’ Wil says. ‘Go on – who do you write to?’

  Meg plays with her bread. ‘I write,’ she says, and looks round at them all with her nose in the air, ‘to my French penfriend.’ She gazes in satisfaction at their faces. ‘Mademoiselle Green found French penfriends for all of us who wanted one. I have to write in French and she, my penfriend, has to write back in English.’

  ‘She won’t be getting much of a letter then.’ Wil returns to his food.

  ‘What’s her name?’ Non breaks in quickly to avoid another confrontation at the table.

  ‘Jean,’ Meg says. ‘Jean Laurent.’

  ‘Jean?’ Wil says. ‘That doesn’t sound very foreign.’

  ‘But, Meg,’ Gwydion says, ‘that’s a boy’s name in French. You say it Jean – a bit like Siôn. See? It’s French for John, like Siôn is Welsh for John.’

  ‘A boy?’ A look of panic spreads across Meg’s face. ‘A boy – are you sure? Oh, no – I told her – him – oh, it can’t be a boy. Why would a boy be called Jean? Why would Mademoiselle give me a boy?’

  ‘Perhaps she didn’t know it was a boy’s name, either,’ Wil says through a mouthful of bread and jam. Throughout his schooling, Wil had never had a high opinion of his teachers. Except for Non, he would say. And she had taught him for only a short time before she had to leave to marry his father.

  Meg mutters to herself as if she is recalling her letter word by French word, looking more worried by the minute.

  Gwydion lifts his letter from the table. ‘From my mother,’ he says, looking at the writing on the envelope. ‘Do you want to know what she has to say, Meg?’

  Meg scowls at him. ‘No.’

  Gwydion shrugs and rips open the envelope with his buttery knife and scans his letter. ‘Nothing special,’ he says. ‘Arianrhod’s keeping well despite the heat. And Mam’s sent you a note, Non. Here—’ He passes the folded sheet with her name underlined on it across the table to Non.

  Non has been expecting Branwen to write to her. Arianrhod’s first baby is due mid-August, and Branwen will be expecting her to help with her herbal preparations. She has not mentioned this to Davey yet, but hopes that help for family is not banned. Non unfolds the note. Her sister has obviously written in haste and Non has trouble deciphering some of the words, but it seems that Arianrhod has not been quite as well as Branwen has told Gwydion, this being women’s business, and Branwen is worried that with only six weeks to go until the birth the baby is still feet down in the womb and she fears a breech birth. As Non stares at the note, a notion occurs to her that she can use this as an excuse to go to London without having to tell anyone where she is going. She can take a ticket to Aberystwyth, as if she were visiting Arianrhod, then go on to London with a ticket from there. Maybe it is not such an impossible task, after all.

  Davey is watching her but averts his eyes when she returns his look. He pushes back his chair. ‘Osian can come with me to the workshop this morning,’ he says. ‘I’ve got work to do on that cabinet if I’m to finish it on time. I got held up with Evan Williams’s coffin. And I’ve got some wood for Osian to choose from to make his next carving.’

  ‘What did Mam want?’ Gwydion nods at the note Non still holds in her hand.

  Non looks at Davey. ‘She needs some preparations,’ she says. ‘She needs raspberry leaves urgently, she says all the bushes in their garden have had their leaves stripped to a skeleton by yellow-tail moth caterpillars.’ She cannot quite believe she is telling her husband these lies and is astonished at herself for thinking of them so easily. ‘I’ll have to take some down there,’ she says.

  Davey doesn’t reply. He stands up and slowly pushes his chair in under the table.

  Why is he looking at her so strangely? Does he know she is lying? The room becomes a blur, she cannot tell who is sitting where, she cannot see what is on the table, she is floating on air. In the distance she hears voices, frantic but muted.

  ‘Non, Non.’

  She hears Davey’s voice above all others. This is the Davey she married, all those long years ago. She is lifted and held, she smells Davey’s soap, feels the roughness of his work shirt against her face, hears the beat of his heart in his breast as he carries her up the stairs and lays her on their bed.

  20

  All afternoon, Maggie Ellis has been in and out of her house, in and out of her closet, back and forth along her garden. Non will not give her the opportunity to speak. She has too much on her mind to spend time listening to Maggie’s lamentations about her bowels or whatever it is that is troubling her this day, and has avoided looking over the wall in Maggie’s direction, has kept to her own work, intent on her own preoccupations.

  Non is still not entirely recovered from her indisposition on Saturday. She had spent the remainder of the day and a large part of Sunday in bed, and Lizzie had helped her by doing the washing by herself yesterday, and spending this morning ironing it all. Her illness had caused a fiasco. On Saturday, Davey had put Meg, who had made a surprisingly competent and kind nurse, in charge of looking after her while he was at the workshop. But trouble had arrived when Catherine Davies discovered that Non was in bed and would not be making dinner for her and William Davies on Sunday. She had marched into the house. Non had heard her steps reach the stairs with military precision then falter a little as she pulled herself up the treads. Non had turned coward and drawn the bedcover up over her face and lain there as if she were dead. But it made no difference. Catherine Davies berated her for her dereliction of duty until she became hysterical and had to be led away home by Wil, fortuitously arrived from helping his father at the workshop.

  Nowadays, Non only has to look at her mother-in-law to be reminded of the sickness eating away at Catherine Davies’s faculties. Non became aware of it during the War, long before Billy died – it was not the shock of Billy’s death that had brought it into being. Non has never believed, as her father told her some did, that a malevolent spirit is responsible for such sicknesses. But there are times when she wonders if maybe, just maybe, this is so in her mother-in-law’s case. It is impossible to know how much of Catherine Davies’s behaviour comes from her own selfish nature and how much from the equally selfish illness that is devouring her.

  Now and then, doubts about her gift creep in at the edges of Non’s mind. Her father had been so proud that she had this facility for what he termed diagnosis. And it is true that when she sees an infirmity, a sickness, there is invariably something there, just as, invariably, sooner or later, the sickness kills its host. When Non came to realise this, her gift became her burden. She could not understand why her father was so proud of her ability to diagnose illnesses for which there were no cures. He had said, One day Rhiannon, we may discover the cures; think what a blessing your great gift will be then. Non had learnt young not to tell anyone about her unwanted ability. And it is, she realises, yet another thing that she has kept from Davey.

  Seeing is not the exact word for what she does; it is more an awareness of a disturbance inside a body rather than an ability to see into the head or stomach or leg and look at a tumour or ulcer or break in a bone. But she has discovered in the last few years that she cannot diagnose illnesses of the mind and she is thankful for this small mercy; she knows something is amiss with old William Davies, she suspects something is amiss with Davey, she fears something is always going to be amiss with Osian, but their minds are an undecipherable scribble to her. Whatever mysterious infirmities have caused them to withdraw from the world remain a mystery to her.

  She shifts her position slightly. She does not think she is about to float on air again, but there is still a lethargy, a tiredness, a sense of unreality about her that she cannot quite shake off. She has c
ollected as many raspberry leaves as the plants can stand to lose and packed them in a basket, though she thinks she may as well spread them out to dry, as they will not stay fresh to carry to Arianrhod in such heat as this. Of course, the leaves are not strictly necessary, the yellowtail moth attack having been a lie. She stretches her back and neck muscles, and pulls the fold of the sun bonnet down over her nape, to avoid any chance of sunstroke, and carefully digs out a henbane plant to transplant into a pot to take with her. She is sure the baby will turn of its own accord, that Branwen is worrying without cause, but if the birth is a breech the henbane, meticulously administered, will send Arianrhod into a waking sleep to help her through the ordeal.

  All the while she works she is conscious of the letter she has tucked away in her skirt pocket. Angela’s reply has arrived. Boring old pattern, Meg had sung out as she tossed the envelope to Non across the breakfast table. Non’s heart had galloped at the sight of it until she thought it would leap from her breast. She could not wait for everyone to leave for work and school but this morning every one of them seemed to have had a reason for loitering. Gwydion had been the last to go, later even than Osian, because his employer had not needed him until later in the morning. Non’s hands were trembling by the time she had sat at the table in the quiet kitchen, run a knife under the flap of the brown envelope and drawn out a slip of paper on which Angela had written, beautifully, an exceedingly brief note. Do come, it had said, but I am not sure how I can help you. Let me know the time your train arrives, and I will meet you. Non had read it over and over, hoping for a meaning other than the obvious. But what Angela wrote was what she meant. Non will not allow herself to be cast down by the brevity of the letter nor by Angela’s comment that she is not sure how she can help. She pats her pocket to make sure the letter is still there, and feels a flash of delight that her simple trick with the envelope had worked so well. But the most difficult part is yet to come.

  She has decided that tomorrow she will travel to Aberystwyth with the herbs. But instead of staying there for a few days to help Branwen and Arianrhod make preparations for the birth, as she has told Davey she will be doing, she will take the train from Aberystwyth to London the following day, meet Angela, and be back home before anyone has time to miss her. Her family and neighbours will think she is in Aberystwyth, and Branwen will think she has returned home. It is so simple. But devious, all the lying and the pretence. She is sure it will be worth it, that she will discover the truth from Angela, the truth that she is convinced will set Davey free from his turns, his waking nightmares, his dark visions – she is still not sure what to call them. It is like a fairy tale, the kind her father used to tell her, where Davey has had a wicked spell cast upon him, and she is setting out on a quest to find the one thing that will break the enchantment.

  She becomes aware of Maggie Ellis again, a hovering presence behind the low wall that separates their gardens. From the corner of her eye she can see Maggie’s hands plucking at the roses that ramble along the wall. She sighs, stands up and turns around fully to face Maggie and stops with her mouth agape when she sees Maggie’s hat, a monstrous creation that looks uncannily like a large parasol perched on Maggie’s head with veils dipping down at intervals from the spokes.

  ‘You’re very busy, Non,’ Maggie says, and with a toss of her head sends all the veils fluttering. Non wishes Wil was here to see the hat.

  ‘I am,’ Non says. ‘I’m off tomorrow to stay with my sister in Aberystwyth. My niece is expecting her first soon and there are one or two little problems to smooth out.’ As soon as the words have left her lips she knows she should not have uttered them.

  Maggie Ellis’s hat quivers. ‘Davey says it’s all right for you to mix your preparations, now, does he?’

  ‘This is different, Mrs Ellis. I’m just gathering these leaves and plants for my sister to use, they’re just a little relaxant for the birth, nothing more.’

  Maggie carries on as if Non has not spoken. ‘Well, it’s such a coincidence, Non, you see – this is exactly what I wanted to have a word with you about.’ She leans over the roses, crushing them so that their petals scent the still air. ‘Now, my sister Mary’s youngest, she needs help, too – of a similar kind, if you take my meaning, Non. You know, something like the help you gave Annie Jones’s daughter during the War – before her father came home on leave and found out what she’d been up to.’

  Betty Jones had been one of the youngest Non had helped, the only one who might be called a girl still, at fourteen. Non thinks of Wil’s revelations about Billy, and wonders. Betty had been raped, and Annie had brought her to Non, just in case, she had said, and Non had been thankful that she could help the girl. Annie had said her husband would have killed his daughter if he found out, even though it was not the girl’s fault. The decoction Non had mixed for her had been successful as far as she knew, or had not actually been needed.

  ‘But, Mrs Ellis, I really can’t do that any more. You know that.’

  ‘I know, Non. But we are neighbours, aren’t we, close neighbours? And what are neighbours for? Why, I don’t suppose anyone else in the world knows about Annie’s daughter except you . . . and me.’

  From the distance, muted by the heat, Non can hear other people’s lives going on, a snatch of song, conversation, laughter. No one has a right to take these things away from people. Maggie Ellis has no right to threaten to take away Betty’s happiness. The girl is now married and expecting her first child, and has a smile on her face whenever Non sees her. And Non has no right to say what she is about to say to Maggie Ellis, but needs must. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you, Mrs Ellis, if you’ve had a recurrence of that . . . little problem you told me Mr Ellis passed on to you when he came back from Manchester that time. It’s not easily curable with herbal preparations, you know, you may need to visit Dr Jones to get something a bit stronger.’ Non is speaking in a conversational tone, and has not raised her voice, but Maggie Ellis starts to bob up and down behind the garden wall, her ridiculous hat making her look as if she is about to take flight.

  ‘Shhh, Non, shhh. That was in complete confidence. You promised, Non. And I’m absolutely fine and so is Mr Ellis. And he never bothers me now. There’s no need to mention it again.’

  Non stares back at her. She feels a little guilty at the agitation she is causing. But, she reminds herself, Betty’s treatment had also been in complete confidence. Except that confidentiality had been difficult – impossible – with Maggie Ellis twitching her curtain every time anyone came to ask for help.

  ‘You see, Non, I promised Mary I’d ask you,’ Maggie Ellis says, holding one imploring hand out over the rambling rose to Non, and clutching her bosom with the other. ‘She’s frantic about the silly girl. Got herself sweet-talked by some door-to-door salesman – did you ever hear of such a thing? – and it turns out he’s got a wife and family Bangor way. I said I’d ask.’ She looks sorrowfully at Non. ‘I wouldn’t say anything to anyone about Annie’s daughter. Oh . . .’ and she clutches her bosom with both hands, ‘oh, you didn’t really think that, Non?’

  Non takes the cloth that covers the raspberry leaves and gathers some of the mugwort that has grown again abundantly despite Davey’s attempts at eradicating it, and wraps it in the cloth and gives the bundle to Maggie Ellis. ‘Tell your sister to boil these and have her daughter drink the water,’ she says. ‘That’s all I can do for you.’

  Maggie Ellis takes the bundle gingerly, as if it contains something distasteful. ‘But, Non, can’t you do that—’ she begins. When she sees Non’s face she scurries away, her hat bobbing and swaying until it becomes entangled with the purple flowers of the potato vine around her back door as she pushes her way into her house.

  21

  She is in a foreign country. And yet it doesn’t look so very different from her own country. She had made an irreversible move into this other world when she stepped onto the platform at Whitchurch to take the train to Crewe, and thence to London.

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sp; In physical terms her journey from Aberystwyth had been uneventful. Her seat was comfortable enough, the heat not too unbearable with both windows let down to draw some sort of breeze through, even if it did carry smuts and smells from the engine’s steam and smoke with it. Other passengers joined her and left her, and the stations at which the train stopped became countless. But she sat by the window with Jane Eyre open, and unread, on her lap; neither did the changing scenery catch her interest: her mind was too full of what she hoped to find in London.

  She had felt a slight frisson of anxiety as the train drew into Abermule and she remembered the photographs of the terrible accident there earlier in the year, which she had seen in the Cambrian News, but no one else seemed to be thinking of the tragedy as they chattered and laughed their way past. Her compartment had a whole family in it at that point travelling to Welshpool, a boisterous all-boy family apart from one small and dainty girl with a huge bow of white ribbon in her hair and who, Non could see, was not going to live long. She had turned away from them all in her distress and gazed sightlessly through the window as the train rattled and swayed its way along the tracks.

  When she changed trains at Crewe, the thing she noticed most, apart from the larger engine drawing the train and the plusher compartment in which she sat, was the language. Everyone spoke English, no one spoke Welsh.

  She was seven when her father had taken her with him on a trip to Liverpool where he was visiting a colleague recently arrived back from a voyage to some distant country – she never understood where – with plants he thought might interest her father. It had astounded her to hear all the children she saw in the city playing and singing and speaking in English. Though her father had taught her to read the language, she stumbled over speaking it, and most of the children she knew at home spoke little English and read even less, despite being punished at school for speaking Welsh. It is because we are in England, Rhiannon, her father had patiently explained to her, it is a different country with a different language.