Dead Man's Embers

by Mari Strachan

  ‘Did I say he can help it, Non?’ Maggie Ellis says. ‘But he should have stayed in England to do his begging, instead of coming here to cause trouble.’ She turns sharply to Osian as he blows more bubbles her way. ‘Stop that!’ she shouts at him.

  Lizzie German takes hold of the edge of Osian’s saucer and draws him away to the other side of the garden. When she returns, she says, ‘He’s taken with them bubbles. They do look like little worlds when you see them close.’

  ‘I don’t expect Non’s paying you to look at bubbles, Lizzie,’ Maggie says.

  ‘She’s not paying me to do your washing, neither,’ Lizzie says, and she pulls Maggie’s clothes and towels out of the washtub one by one and slaps them on top of the wall in a sopping wet heap.

  Non feels helpless. She has never known how to deal with the altercations and arguments between Lizzie and Maggie. All she can do is stand here watching them. As if they were in a play.

  ‘At least they’re washed,’ Maggie says. ‘I can put them through my own mangle here.’

  Under her breath, Lizzie mutters, ‘Silly old besom. Like to put you through the mangle, so I would.’ Maggie looks at her through narrowed eyes, but Lizzie begins to wring the clothes left in the tub, turning the handle of the mangle as if it really is Maggie Ellis she is wringing between the rollers, and not Davey’s faded work trousers.

  Maggie begins to pluck at her washing, pulling away one item after another into her basket. She nods at Osian. ‘Look – he’s blowing those bubbles as if his life depended on it.’ She watches for a moment, then says to Non, ‘At least it’s safer than carrying that old knife of his around the garden. Used to give me the shivers, that did.’

  Non realises what it is that is different about Osian. It is a long time since she has seen him without his penknife, whittling obsessively at a piece of wood.

  43

  The heat has definitely broken. A breeze blows over them through the open door, carrying the scents of the phlox and roses in its pleasant warmth. The washing had dried beautifully by the time Non had fetched it in. Maggie Ellis was right – it will be a great deal easier to iron it all tomorrow than it has been for weeks.

  ‘It’ll probably rain soon,’ Meg says. She looks towards the door and grimaces. She and her friends have taken to going down to the beach in the early evening; rain would put an end to that.

  ‘We could do with some rain,’ Davey says. ‘And thank goodness that great heat is at an end. It’ll be easier for everybody.’

  ‘Not for me,’ Meg says.

  Davey looks up from his supper plate. ‘Maybe it’s time you started thinking about other people a little bit, Meg.’

  ‘I am,’ Meg says. ‘I’m thinking about my friends, too.’

  Davey does not reply. Sometimes there is no arguing with Meg, she has an answer for everything. But Davey is subdued this evening. Non wonders if he is weighed down by the memories he has recovered. In some ways he seems like his old self, what she has always thought of as his true self, but she supposes that now his true self will be part the old Davey and part the Davey that fought the War. He and she will have to become used to one another all over again. And that is not necessarily a bad thing, she thinks, watching him concentrate on eating his supper. It will be . . . an adventure.

  She looks around the table. Gwydion is also subdued this evening, no doubt thinking about his impending move to Ireland. And Osian is always quiet, his face inscrutable, there is no telling what his thoughts are. He has been watching Davey since they sat down to have supper, Non realises, and she wonders if something is troubling him. She is reminded of his penknife. ‘Has Osian left his knife in the workshop?’ she asks Davey. ‘Or has he lost it?’

  Davey stops eating. ‘I’m going to have to get him another one,’ he says. ‘Maybe we can go to Port on the train, Osian. We’ll go to Kerfoots – they always have a good selection.’

  ‘Port on the train! You’re getting a bit adventurous, Davey.’ Gwydion raises his eyebrows in mock amazement.

  ‘I’ve had enough of adventures, Gwydion. It’s your turn now.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to them,’ Gwydion says.

  His tone causes Non to look more closely at him. He does not sound so sure. Or is she imagining it?

  Davey also looks enquiringly at Gwydion. ‘It’s not too late to change your mind, you know.’

  ‘Don’t do that,’ Meg says. ‘If you change your mind, I won’t be able to come to stay with you and Aoife.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were planning on staying with us, Meg. You’d always be welcome. All of you. The Irish are hospitable people, you know.’

  ‘Maybe I won’t be coming until I go to university,’ Meg says. ‘You can find out what Trinity is like. Find out if they teach French. Maybe I’ll go there. Maybe I’ll stay with you. And Aoife.’

  Meg is not so much following her destiny as making it. And her destiny looks to become more expensive every day.

  ‘You’ll have to work hard at school,’ Gwydion tells Meg.

  ‘Why is everyone always telling me what I know?’

  They laugh at Meg. Except Osian who stares at his father without blinking. Osian is not eating, his food barely touched on his plate. What is this about? Non says, ‘When can you take Osian to Port, Davey? I think he misses his knife.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Davey says. ‘How about it, Osian?’

  Tomorrow! Non has never known Davey take time off from his work.

  ‘You’re not going to leave that Teddy on his own to work on your precious coffins, are you?’ Meg says.

  ‘There are no more coffins to be made, Meg, not at the moment anyway. And long may the moment last! And you’ll be pleased to hear that Teddy has gone.’

  Non stops eating, her knife and fork poised above her plate. Teddy has gone. Without making any more trouble. She knew Davey could do it. She smiles at him. She wants to get up from the table and hold hands with him and dance around the room until they are reeling, the way her father used to do with her whenever he received good news.

  Meg gives an exaggerated shudder. ‘Osian and I are very glad about that. We didn’t like him one bit. Did we, Osh?’

  Osh. Meg has taken him under her wing. Non did not expect that.

  ‘Wasn’t he up to much, then, this Teddy?’ Gwydion says.

  ‘Worse than that.’ Meg gives another shudder. ‘He was very peculiar. He won’t come back again, will he, Tada?’

  ‘No,’ Davey says.

  How can Davey be so definite? Doubt begins to shade Non’s relief. Won’t there always be a danger that Teddy will come back? That sooner or later he will tell someone what happened to Ben Bach?

  ‘Non,’ Meg says, rising from her chair, ‘please may I not wash the dishes tonight? I’ve got some schoolwork to do. I should have done it right away when the holidays started, and I don’t want to forget it.’

  ‘French, I suppose,’ Non says, imagining Madame Bovary, in French.

  ‘No. Why would you suppose that?’

  Non smiles. ‘Go on, Meg. Gwydion can help me. Take Osian up with you, it’s time he was in bed.’

  Non and Gwydion clear the table, and wash and dry the dishes. It is already twilight beyond the window panes. Non watches their reflections in the glass, busy at work. It is quieter tonight, there are no owls about. They must have found better hunting elsewhere. She stands still at the sink below the open sash, listening to the breeze rustle through the roses that climb the wall around the window.

  ‘Look at that moon rising,’ Gwydion says. ‘It’s a lovely evening. And cooler at last. I think I’ll go for a walk, do a bit of thinking, Non. I’ll see you both later. I’ll take the key so I don’t disturb you, shall I?’

  Davey flaps his Daily Herald at Gwydion to wave him on his way.

  Non dries her hands. She closes the back door and the door to the hall and the window. Davey watches her. She feels his gaze following her as she moves about the room. She sits opposite him at the table; s
he takes his newspaper from his hands and lays it down.

  ‘Davey, is Teddy really gone?’

  ‘He is, Non.’

  ‘But . . . what did he say? Is he going to stay away? What if he turns up again? What if he tells everyone about Ben Bach the next time he comes back, or the time after, or the time after that? Are we always going to be waiting and wondering?’

  ‘He won’t be coming back, I promise. There’s no need for you to worry, no need for you to ever think of him again.’ Davey leans across the table and cups Non’s face in his hands. He looks into her eyes. ‘We can just forget about him.’

  Non holds Davey’s gaze for a long time. ‘Davey?’ she says, ‘what—?’

  Davey takes one hand away from her face, his calloused palm stroking her cheek. He smiles at her and lays his forefinger against her lips. He shakes his head. ‘Shhh . . .’ he says. ‘Shhh . . .’

  44

  Non has not slept. Scarcely a wink, she thinks. The window had rattled until she could stand it no longer and had climbed out of bed to wedge her handkerchief between the sashes and the frame. She wishes it were as easy to quieten the thoughts that have rattled in her head all night. It is noticeably cooler. She should have slept well on the first cool night for months, but she has heard the clock strike each hour throughout the night. Now, she hears it mark the quarter hour. Quarter to six, and the dawn has broken, tingeing the sky rose-pink, sung-in by a choir of birds.

  A whimper comes from Davey who has slept all night. Like a baby, she thinks, a little resentfully. She leans on her elbow to watch his face, the blush of the dawn reflecting from the bedroom walls to colour his skin. She thinks how strange it is that colour vanishes in the dark. She has always been able to see clearly at night, but it is always a monochrome world she sees, shades of grey.

  Davey’s eyes flutter beneath his eyelids. He is dreaming, but of what? It does not appear to be a bad dream, his face is reposeful, a slight smile on his lips. But it is early days yet, she reminds herself, to think that he is . . . cured. It is only three nights since he remembered what it was his nightmares were trying to bring back to him. It seems strange that knowing what he had done – which seems to Non an act that would haunt her all her life – has brought some kind of peace to Davey. It must, then, be best to know, she thinks, rather than not know; it is something she has always thought to be true in principle. But to kill someone she knows, deliberately, in cold blood, whatever the reason – could she do that? She does not know the answer. Would it not depend on the circumstances? War changes everything, she thinks. Everything. Everyone in the country must know that. We will never be free from it.

  When the clock strikes six she will wake him, she decides, laying her head back on the pillow. Why could he not have said what happened to Teddy? He could have said he promised he would go away and not come back, or whatever it was Teddy did say to him. She will not allow entry to the thoughts that have hovered about her all night, waiting to pinch and prod her into the wrong conclusions.

  She turns her head away from Davey. Her bedside table still looks a little bare to her without the bottle of tincture on it. It seems to have left a large gap for such a small object. She is hardly ever aware of the beat of her heart now, which is far pleasanter than feeling it leap and flutter in her breast throughout the day, as it often used to do.

  The kitchen clock chimes the hour before it begins to strike. She counts: six o’clock. She turns back to Davey and lays her hand on his shoulder to shake him awake. I have not done this since before he went away, she thinks, when he was impossible to wake in the mornings. She had given up trying eventually, she remembers, and used the time before Davey tumbled out of bed to keep up with her reading. So much of our knowledge is in books, her father used to say to her, though she doubts he meant the novels she loves to read. They are like her father’s stories – not true, but holding truths within them.

  She shakes Davey again, and he grunts and opens his eyes to peer at her as if she is a stranger and he does not know where he is.

  ‘Wake up, Davey,’ she says. She watches him remember; it is as if his thoughts are being poured back into his head after being absent all night.

  He glances over her shoulder at the window. ‘It’s early, Non,’ he says.

  ‘I want to talk to you, Davey,’ she says. ‘Before everyone’s up.’

  ‘Talk?’

  She knows Davey is a doer rather than a talker. He has talked to her more than he has ever done in their few hours of revelations.

  ‘About Teddy,’ she says.

  ‘What about him?’ Davey’s eyes close again as he speaks.

  ‘I want to know what happened to him.’ She shakes Davey by the shoulder. ‘Please, Davey.’

  ‘He’s gone. What more do you need to know?’

  ‘The manner of his going,’ she says.

  ‘The manner of his going!’ Davey laughs, waking himself properly. ‘Oh, Non, you sound like someone in a drama. He just . . . went.’

  How can he laugh when this is so serious? She will make him listen. ‘Did someone make him go, Davey? Did you?’

  Davey turns to stare at her. He shuffles himself into a sitting position, pulling his pillow up behind his back. ‘So, you tell me what you think the manner of his going was, Non.’ His steely voice is at odds with his bleary eyes and tufty hair.

  She wants to back down, un-ask the question, go back to being the good, pliant wife. But she says, ‘Something doesn’t ring true, Davey, something doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Teddy didn’t make sense a minute of the time he was here,’ Davey says. ‘The only sensible thing that he did was to go on his way.’

  ‘Why?’ Non says. ‘What changed so suddenly?’

  ‘Saturday night,’ Davey says. ‘I had to take him back to the workshop, that’s why I was so late. Constable Evans said the boys had been pretty rough with him. I expect he took fright. He was . . . gone by Sunday morning, anyway.’

  Non notices the hesitation. ‘But why didn’t you tell us he’d gone when you came home on Sunday?’

  Davey makes a fuss of pulling his pillow into a different position behind his back. ‘I didn’t know he’d gone for good, did I? He might have come back. I didn’t want to raise your hopes.’

  She sees immediately that he is lying. It is something to do with his eyes. She cannot put it into words.

  ‘Tell me the truth, Davey,’ she says.

  A mulish look creeps into the set of his face, so like the expression she had sometimes caught on Wil’s face that she catches her breath. She had always thought it was something Wil had taken from Grace.

  ‘It can’t be worse than what you told me on Saturday evening, can it?’ she says.

  ‘Why have you got to know everything, Non?’ Davey says. ‘Why can’t you let things be sometimes?’

  She thinks she has let things be far too much. She is not about to do so again. She waits to hear what Davey will say. Suddenly she is aware of her heart beating fast, and lays her hand over it as if that will calm her agitation.

  ‘I was trying to protect you,’ Davey says, at last. He looks at her. ‘You and the children.’

  ‘From what?’

  Davey shrugs. He looks at the foot of the bed again. ‘When Osian and I got to the workshop on Sunday,’ he says, ‘he was still there, up in the loft. I left him to sleep – he was so drunk when I took him back the night before, he wouldn’t have been any use for anything. Albert came to the workshop later and we put old Calvin in his coffin. It was dinner time by then, so I told Albert I’d nail the top down, and he went off for his Sunday dinner. I got our oatcakes and cheese out for me and Osian, and called up to Teddy to see if he wanted any. There was no sound from him, so I went up the ladder and there he was – still fast asleep. I tried to shake him awake.’

  Non listens to his story. She watches the sun climb higher in the sky, the gathering clouds scudding across its face, the bedroom becoming lighter and darker in turn.

&n
bsp; ‘I couldn’t wake him, Non. And then I pulled him on his back and I saw he was dead.’

  Non feels no surprise, but she is saddened. ‘Poor Teddy,’ she says. ‘Poor man.’ She remembers all the men in Angela’s ward. ‘Was it his heart, I wonder?’

  Davey turns his attention from the foot of the bed to Non. ‘Truth is, Non, his throat was cut.’

  Non gasps and covers her mouth. She does not know what she was expecting, but it was not something so . . . so bloody as this. This is the way you would kill an animal.

  ‘You wanted to know, Non,’ Davey says. ‘The mattress he was on was soaked through.’

  Osian, thinks Non. Where was he when this was happening? ‘Did Osh see him?’

  Davey turns his head away. ‘I don’t know,’ he says.

  Non thinks she knows. She thinks of Osian’s implacable face. She thinks of him not taking his eyes off Davey, even to eat his food. Was he looking for comfort, or was he wondering what his father had done?

  ‘What happened to him, Davey?’ she says. ‘Who . . . who cut his throat?’ She can hardly bring herself to say such words.

  Davey starts. ‘No one, Non. No one. He killed himself.’

  ‘Cut his own throat?’

  ‘I saw men do that in the War, Non,’ Davey says. ‘It’s a quick way to go. He didn’t have anything to live for, Teddy. He was a lost soul.’

  ‘But to cut his own throat . . .’ She can scarcely believe that she is sitting in bed talking about such a thing. ‘Poor man,’ she says again, though she does not think she feels as much sadness as she should. It is too tinged with relief. ‘What did Constable Evans say? There’ll have to be an inquest, won’t there?’ As she asks the questions she thinks it is strange that Maggie Ellis and Lizzie had said nothing of this yesterday. The town must have been humming with the news.