Dead Man's Embers

by Mari Strachan

  Non recognises the voice, it is Tommy from the Blue Lion. Another voice mutters something but she cannot make it out, and cannot place the voice.

  ‘Thought they were going to lynch him,’ Tommy says.

  ‘He deserved it, insulting us. Who does he think he is? Might have been a bloody officer in the War but he’s a nobody here, a nobody,’ says the second voice. ‘Twenty-two boys we’ve lost! He’s got a bloody cheek talking like—’

  ‘I’ll be right there,’ Davey says. He comes back into the kitchen. ‘You heard all that?’

  Non nods at him.

  He gives her a bleak look. ‘I’d better go. You’re right, though, Non. Something must be done to send Teddy on his way.’

  41

  Non wishes she had been able to keep awake until Davey’s return last night. The loud banging on the door and the shouting had woken Meg and Osian, and by the time Non had cut bread and butter and made a pot of tea, then chivvied them back into their beds when they had eaten, she had been so tired that she had taken herself to bed – not intending to sleep, but merely to rest.

  This morning they were all late. Davey had slapped some oatcakes and cheese into his tin and rushed to the workshop, herding a dreamy Osian ahead of him clutching a lump of half-worked wood and his penknife, and Meg had raced away to the St David’s with a breakfast of bread and jam in her hand. Non made a pot of tea and now sits at the open kitchen door, a cup and saucer in her hand, listening to her hens and watching Herman who is making her head spin as he walks around and around the saucer of water she put out for him. She closes her eyes for a moment, raising her face to feel a promise of coolness in the air. Maybe the great heat is about to break at last.

  She is lazy, she should be attending to her housework – there is always housework to be done – but her mind is busy, and she has stolen this time to sit and think. Thinking is as important as doing, Rhiannon, her father would say to her when she used to try to pull him from his chair to help her with some childish task. What she learnt last night requires careful thought.

  When she had wondered about what it might be that Davey had forgotten, she had not imagined it could be a thing so terrible. She had no idea that such executions took place. She wonders how many soldiers like Davey had to execute men they knew and had fought with side by side. Anyone’s mind would try to erase such a memory, she thinks. She had not wanted Davey to remember what had happened, but now that he has, surely there will be no rubbed-out memories struggling to re-appear, and Davey will no longer suffer those waking nightmares when he is back in the trenches.

  But she knows that it will always haunt them, the death of Ben Bach – the foolishness of it, the grievousness of it, the burden of it. They will always carry it with them. She lifts her cup to her lips and realises that she has let her tea grow cold; she bends forward to put the cup and saucer down on the floor. It is as well that she is adept at keeping secrets, she thinks, and that Davey is not one to talk for the sake of it. The manner of Ben Bach’s death is something that can never be told, never be shared.

  ‘The War has changed everything,’ she says to Herman. He struts towards her and dips his head into her cup. He takes a sip of the cold tea, lifting his beak high to swallow it. Even he had his difficulties in the War – some silly boys had made a game out of saying he was a German spy and tried to shoot stones at him with their catapults. They were poor shots and had missed, but Herman had been frightened. Does he remember any of it? She puts her foot out to ruffle the feathers on his back with her toes until his affronted look makes her stop. Sometimes she wonders if Herman thinks he is some higher being and not a bird at all.

  ‘Maybe you can tell me what ought to be done about Teddy,’ she says to him. Something, as Davey said, has to be done to send Teddy on his way. The man seems determined to tell the whole town about Ben Bach’s death. She wonders, if Davey were able to explain to Teddy the circumstances of Ben’s court-martial – that Ben was under-age, and had the mind of a young child – if Davey were to tell him the truth of it all, then surely Teddy would see the cruelty to Elsie, to Ben’s memory, to the survivors of the War, of telling it. Davey is able to speak so persuasively to people when it is needed – she has only to think of the people he has recruited to his branch of the Labour Party – that surely Teddy will listen to him. She will talk to Davey after supper, when Osian and Meg are in bed; she will ask him what happened to Teddy last night and if he had an opportunity to persuade Teddy to keep quiet about Ben or, even better, persuade him to leave the town, to go on his way again. But even as she ponders these sensible ideas she knows that there is no sense to the reasons Teddy has for proclaiming Ben’s cowardice and execution to the whole town. Oh, she cannot bear to think of Elsie hearing such things about her boy. She scrubs away the tears from her face with the back of her hand. Crying is not the answer, but she cannot think what is.

  A sharp pain in her foot makes her jump from her chair. Herman is pecking hard at her toes. She pushes him away. ‘You’re quite right, Herman,’ she says. ‘I should have given you your bread and milk instead of sitting here so uselessly. Come on.’ She picks up her chair and takes it back to the table, Herman fluttering in her wake.

  42

  ‘What happened here, missus?’ Lizzie German points at the ruined shrub.

  ‘Maggie Ellis was a bit too anxious to hear what Meg and I were talking about when we had tea out here on Saturday,’ Non says.

  ‘That woman needs something to do, don’t she?’

  Non assumes this is a rhetorical question from Lizzie, but she herself is curious about what Maggie Ellis does. ‘I thought she had to do a lot for her husband,’ she says. ‘Isn’t he bed-bound? I haven’t seen him about since before the War ended.’

  ‘He was ill with something one time. Something he didn’t ought to be ill with – always after the women, that one. He’s just lazy by now. Lazy and a bully. He were always a bully, mind.’

  ‘Poor Maggie.’ Non feels guilt at the fun she and Meg made of Maggie on Saturday.

  Lizzie shrugs. She and Maggie Ellis have known each other all their lives. They each know how the other has suffered. But life has been exceptionally hard for Lizzie. Non cannot imagine being Lizzie’s age and bringing up three young grandchildren. Everyone has had to be stoic because of what the War has done to them, but some more so than others.

  ‘I’m glad you’re going to help out with old William Davies,’ Non says.

  ‘Puts food on the table,’ Lizzie says. ‘And I always liked old William.’

  ‘It’s a pity about what’s happening to him. Life isn’t fair, is it, Lizzie? I don’t know how I would have managed through the War without his help. Little things, but they made a difference.’ Non picks up the basket with the dirty washing in it, and tips the contents onto the table. She and Lizzie begin to sort them.

  ‘You needed help then,’ Lizzie says. ‘But look at you now, missus. Funny them little drops making all that difference.’

  ‘I feel like a different person,’ Non says. She leans her hip against the table. ‘Well, not a different person, more like I’ve come out of a dream or a daze.’ She has not had the leisure to think about the difference, but she knows that she gets through her housework more quickly, without such effort and tiredness. She knows her thoughts are quicker and more lucid. She hopes her gift has gone, but she suspects it has not vanished entirely.

  ‘Give me that towel there,’ Lizzie says. ‘It’ll go in with the whites. That doctor knew what he was doing all right, didn’t he?’

  ‘He did, lucky for me.’ Non watches Lizzie sweep the white articles towards herself along the table top.

  ‘Has old Mrs Davies been to the doctor yet? We both know she needs to, missus.’

  ‘I’m sure we’d know if she had, Lizzie – we’d have had chapter and verse of his failings. She’s probably better off not knowing, don’t you think? I’m not sure there’s anything to be done for her.’ Non begins to sort through the remainder
of the washing. ‘I don’t see those things any more, Lizzie. That . . . gift. It’s gone.’

  Lizzie stops picking over the clothes. ‘Those sorts of things are always with you. Either you’ve got them or you don’t. You’ll see.’

  Non does not want what she suspects confirmed by Lizzie. She does not want to think Esmé was right. She believes that her father had mistakenly diagnosed the condition of her heart out of his love for her, and she believes that if he had lived, and seen the longer effects of the lifeblood he made for her, he would have changed his diagnosis. She would like to believe that he was mistaken about her gift, too.

  ‘Best thing for old William to be going the way he is, maybe, given how she is.’ Lizzie resumes her work, dropping some of the whites into the tub at her feet and handing others to Non to scrub on the washboard.

  Osian runs over to Lizzie and blows at the soap bubbles that float up from her tub.

  ‘Bit of a breeze blowing up this morning,’ Lizzie says as she watches him. ‘Look at them bubbles go.’

  ‘I think the heat’s breaking at last, don’t you?’ Non begins to rub the collars vigorously on her washboard.

  ‘Good thing, too,’ Lizzie says, ‘before something else breaks first.’

  ‘Davey feels as if he’s been making nothing but coffins lately,’ Non says.

  ‘Mmm,’ Lizzie says. ‘It’s true a lot of the old ones have gone. Not before their time, most of them, mind. Burying old Calvin today, are they?’

  ‘That’s why we’ve got Osian,’ Non says. ‘The funeral’s this morning. Davey had to go in to finish the coffin yesterday. Albert wanted to get the body into it and the top nailed down as soon as he could.’

  ‘Don’t keep in this heat, the dead don’t.’ Lizzie lifts the dolly up and down, round and back again, pounding the clothes in the tub.

  Non scrubs collars and cuffs and the fronts of aprons, and drops each article as she finishes it into Lizzie’s tub. There is something soothing about this ritual of doing the washing every Monday with Lizzie German. It puts everything in its place, it enables her to see a way forward. She is certain, this morning, that Davey will be able to persuade Teddy to keep quiet, to go on his way, to seek help elsewhere if that is what he needs, if he has not done so already.

  ‘That Calvin were the kind you think’ll live for ever, mind. Outlived all his family,’ Lizzie says. ‘Built like an oak, he were.’

  ‘Davey’s making the coffin in oak,’ Non says. ‘He says it’s the biggest he’s ever made. Albert was complaining about the cost of the wood for it.’

  ‘That Albert!’ Lizzie shakes her head.

  ‘So Davey said he’d pay for it,’ Non says. ‘He couldn’t bear to see a man like Calvin in a pauper’s coffin.’

  ‘Heart of gold, your Davey,’ Lizzie says.

  Non wishes she had found an opportunity to talk to Davey yesterday about what he had said to Teddy, and about what Teddy was going to do. Gwydion had returned just before supper from his trip to Holyhead and had spent the evening telling her about his plans, and by the time she went up to bed Davey was fast asleep. She did not have the heart to wake him, and instead kissed his dear face and lay with her arm around him. As if she could keep him safe.

  ‘Is that all the whites, missus?’ Lizzie looks down into her tub. ‘Have I got them all?’

  ‘There’s not so much now we’re not doing Wil’s washing, is there?’

  ‘To think of him,’ Lizzie says, leaning back to stretch herself, ‘sailing away across them seas. It’s a marvel. It really is.’

  ‘He was ready to go, Lizzie. We gave him a good send-off, though I think maybe we chose the wrong kind of presents – more the sorts of things we’d like ourselves.’

  ‘Good to try new things,’ Lizzie says. ‘Stops you getting stuck in one place like an old wagon wheel in a rut.’

  Non laughs at her. ‘Meg’s talking about going away, too. She liked the idea of getting presents.’

  ‘Go far, that one,’ Lizzie says. ‘Looks after herself.’

  Meg seems very self-possessed, Non thinks. She seems to know what she wants from life and even how to get what she wants. But she says, ‘She’s still a child, though, Lizzie, in many ways. She won’t be leaving us for a while.’

  ‘Help me get the mangle in place, missus,’ Lizzie says, and between them they manoeuvre it between Lizzie’s tub and the rinsing tub. Lizzie draws the whites one at a time from the tub and gives each a quick wring and shake before putting them between the rollers for Non to turn the handle.

  She did not have the strength to do this not so long ago. She has written to Seb to tell him of her gratitude and her growing normality. He will be waiting to hear if there is a baby on the way. Or, more probably, he will have patients with far more pressing needs and have forgotten about her – though she does not imagine he has many patients who are medicating themselves with recipes from the Middle Ages.

  ‘Keep turning that handle,’ Lizzie says. She holds one of Gwydion’s shirts between the rollers. ‘I dare say your nephew will be off soon, though. That one’s got itchy feet all right.’

  ‘He’s sailing for Ireland this Thursday,’ Non says. ‘I can’t believe it, Lizzie. Going off to a completely new life, without a backward look.’ She hopes that Gwydion will be happy, contented, that everything will be as he would wish; she hopes he will have no regrets. She wishes Branwen would yield a little.

  ‘The only Irish I know are them pan-mending tinkers that come round,’ Lizzie says. ‘Rough lot, they are.’ She turns round from her work to wave her hand at Osian who is trying to work up some bubbles in the tub. ‘Stop it,’ she says. ‘Here, missus, have you got a saucer I can put some soapy water on for him?’

  Non fetches an old saucer from the kitchen and a wire Davey had bent into a circle for Osian to make bubbles when he was younger that had been hanging in the kitchen ever since.

  ‘But,’ Lizzie says as she takes the apparatus from Non, ‘I don’t s’pose your Gwydion’s going to live with the tinkers.’

  ‘He’s got a job at the university in Dublin,’ Non says, ‘and a sweetheart over there he’s going to marry. Still, Lizzie, it’s hard to see him leave.’

  Lizzie stops mashing soap onto the saucer and looks at Non. ‘O’ course,’ she says, ‘there’s some we’d like to see the back of.’

  ‘You heard about Saturday, then?’

  ‘Who hasn’t?’ Lizzie says.

  ‘Maybe the Constable will just ask him to move on. He did with some of the other tramps.’

  ‘He’s no tramp,’ Lizzie says. ‘He behaves as if he’s got nothing to lose, that one. Need to tread careful with him, don’t want him telling what he knows.’

  Non feels the hair prickle at the back of her neck. How does Lizzie German know these things? But the manner of Ben Bach’s death is something Non can never discuss even with Lizzie; it is a burden she and Davey have to carry on their own.

  Lizzie gives Osian the saucer of soapy water and reminds him how to make bubbles from it. He blows them high and the breeze that has been whispering incessantly through the trees and the grass floats them away.

  Non hears sneezes from the other side of the garden wall and Maggie Ellis appears rubbing energetically at her nose. ‘Stop sending those bubbles my way, boy,’ she tells Osian.

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Ellis,’ Non says. ‘We didn’t know you were there. Nice to have a bit of a breeze blowing through, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’ll clear the air a bit, won’t it, Non?’ Maggie leans on the wall. ‘You all right there, Lizzie?’

  ‘Fine, Maggie. And you? Got over your accident?’

  Non can see a long, raw graze on the side of Maggie’s face, which must be sore. But Maggie Ellis does not hear Lizzie, or she pretends not to.

  ‘I’ve got a few things to go in the wash. Any chance of putting them in with yours, Non?’

  ‘Don’t you ever do your own washing?’ Lizzie says.

  ‘Of course I do,’ Maggie Ellis s
ays. ‘Only one or two bits, Non. Shall I pass them over?’

  Non sighs, though she should be used to this by now. ‘Just one or two things then, Mrs Ellis. They’ll soon dry for you today.’

  ‘Don’t need much ironing if they get a good blow, do they?’ Maggie bends down behind the wall and re-appears with a pile of clothing and towels that she puts into Non’s waiting arms.

  ‘You old besom,’ Lizzie German says, ‘you had them there all the time.’ She stands with her hands on her hips and gives Maggie Ellis a hard stare. ‘One day missus here’ll say no instead of yes, and then where will you be?’

  ‘Neighbours help each other out, don’t they, Non?’ Maggie says, then sneezes as several of Osian’s bubbles land on her face. Maggie’s hands flail at them as if they are angry wasps.

  Osian is unmoved by the commotion he has caused. He watches the bubbles, and Non and Lizzie stand still to watch him. His concentration is total. Something is different about him today, but Non cannot put her finger on the difference.

  Maggie staggers back to the wall, rubbing her eyes, which are red from the soapy bubbles. ‘Strange boy,’ she says.

  ‘Clever boy,’ Lizzie says. ‘Knows not to like people much. Knows not to trust them.’

  ‘I heard he doesn’t like that Teddy your Davey’s taken on,’ Maggie says to Non.

  So Maggie Ellis was listening to her and Meg on Saturday. Non tries to recall what else they had talked about.

  ‘Did you hear about him on Saturday?’ Maggie says. ‘He did upset people, talking a lot of nonsense. As if we haven’t all got enough to upset us already. Didn’t I say, Non – weeks ago – didn’t I say those tramps would be trouble? Not even Welsh, some of them, I said to you. Didn’t I?’

  ‘You did, Mrs Ellis,’ Non says. She stirs the contents of the rinsing tub. And Lizzie pounds the washing Maggie handed over the wall, along with the rest of the wash. Non watches the vigour with which Lizzie wields the dolly; anyone would think it was Maggie in there. ‘But he can’t help it, you know – some sort of war damage, Davey thinks. And he can’t help being English, can he?’ Non is relieved to realise that Teddy has not said anything in particular; if he had, Maggie Ellis would have been bound to hear of it. A surge of certainty floods through her: Davey is sure to persuade him to leave before he has another opportunity to tell everyone, anyone, about Ben Bach.