by M K Jones
“So, how’s the job hunting going?” she launched straight at her sister as soon as Maggie broke off from her computer and sat down at the table.
“Nice table, by the way. Bit big for the kitchen, though.”
“Thanks,” Maggie acknowledged, pleased with this small possibility of diversion. “I found it in that disgusting old shed at the bottom of the garden, when Graeme knocked it down last weekend. It’s come up well, hasn’t it?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I didn’t. You asked about the table. It’s very old, by the way, at least a hundred years. I stripped it down and varnished it back up. Goes well with my old kitchen chairs, doesn’t it?”
“Now you’re changing the subject.”
“Yes, I am. But really, Fee, it isn’t any of your business.” She saw her sister’s eyebrows rise as her mouth opened, and cut in quickly to head off the protest.
“Before you get wound up, think for a minute. I came back on the understanding that I’d be allowed to lead my own life. I know you mean well, but I know what I’m doing.”
“Oh, really?” The response was as sarcastic as Maggie expected. She knew that her sister meant well, but as far as Maggie was concerned, Fiona suffered from the family “disease” of aiming low and taking no risks.
Fiona had married Graeme at the age of nineteen, had raised three children and had never known the stress of having to lose anything because of financial problems, or any other reason. Fiona had never had what Maggie called a job. She lived for her family, was a school governor, Chair of the PTA, and was a stalwart of the local church. None of which Maggie aspired to. Maggie looked at Fee, who now stood up with her tea mug and began to march around the kitchen table. There was no similarity between them. Fiona, tall, dark and elegant, was always beautifully groomed and superbly dressed. Maggie preferred what Alice and Jack called the “lived-in” look when she wasn’t working. They often joked that she was a prime candidate for a TV makeover show, which could never be said for Fiona. Fiona was practical and no-nonsense. She believed in what she could see and understand.
“So, what are you going to do?” Fiona asked again, more vehemently. There had been enough real concern in the question to stop Maggie from getting angry.
“I’m going to do something this weekend, I promise.” Maggie had refused to discuss the matter any further. The interaction also decided her against sharing with her sister her growing concern about the effect her research was having on herself and Alice. And as for what she had found earlier in the day when she had printed the photograph of the grave. She didn’t know who she was going to confide in about that, but she was going to have to speak to someone soon, because it was all becoming too much to keep to herself and Janice wasn’t due back from the US for another two months.
Maggie decided she might as well give the library a try. It was still early, so she could put in a few hours before she had to pick up the children from school. Noleen called goodbye as Maggie left and shouted out something to her. Maggie returned the wave and tried to make out what Noleen was saying. It sounded like “Beware the gorgon!”
Eight
Twenty minutes later Maggie stood at the entrance to the ugly library building on the main square of Newport, a three-storey concrete block, much in keeping with the architecture of central Newport.
From the outside it didn’t seem promising, but Maggie resolutely pushed open the glass doors and made her way to the reception desk, then to the second floor. As the steel doors opened, the reference room was directly in front of her; it was surprisingly impressive. Bright and light with ceiling-to-floor windows on two sides and row upon row of books, filing cabinets and long tables with computers and microfiche readers interspersed by new individual desks. Beyond the entrance to the right was an old wooden desk with a notice that read “Family History”. The desk was unmanned.
“Great,” thought Maggie. “So what next?” While she looked around uncertainly, she was approached by a tall woman in a black twinset, wearing black “librarian” glasses, and a badge that gave her name as Eileen. She asked, “May I help you”, but with no conviction that she meant it.
“I’m doing family history research. Are you the person I should speak to?”
“No.” The response was terse. “The local society has a desk here, but the person looking after it today has gone out.”
“Do you know how long they’ll be?” Maggie asked. “I have to be home for the school run. Is there anything you could help me with in the meantime?” She gave the librarian her most winning smile.
“More than my job’s worth to interfere with them.”
She shrugged her head towards the battered desk, but, seeing the disappointed look on Maggie’s face, she relented a little. “I could show you how the microfiche readers work and where the records are. That will get you started.” She glared defiantly at the empty desk. “That shouldn’t cause a problem.” Looking back she raised her eyebrows in expectation of Maggie asking the obvious question.
Maggie didn’t miss the expression or the strong emphasis on the “shouldn’t” but decided not to pursue it, although she sensed from Eileen’s expression that she would have been only too pleased to go into detail if Maggie had shown any inclination to listen.
“I’ll leave a note on the desk to say where I am.”
Maggie followed Eileen across the room to the table of microfiche and microfilm readers on the back row of desks. A moment’ instruction was enough for Maggie to pick up the basics of reading records, but a few minutes more elucidated that the births, marriages and deaths records were the same as those at County Hall.
“I’ve already been through those at the county archive. Is there anything else I can look at? The archivist said that you have all of the local newspapers going back to the 1870s?”
“Earlier than that,” replied the librarian triumphantly. “Our staff have indexed the articles so you can look by subject and name, as well as by year.”
“Wow, very impressive.” This was encouraging enough for Eileen to launch enthusiastically into an explanation of how to work through the indexing system, but all the time, she checked furtively over her shoulder at the still empty Family History desk.
Maggie decided to start looking around 1875. She had worked out that this would have been around the time that John and Ruth moved into their first farm. She didn’t expect for a moment that it would have given rise to comment in the local newspapers, but it was at least somewhere to start.
Over the next half hour she read her way through ten years of newspaper headlines, fascinated by many of them and determined that as soon as she had time she would come back to read them in more depth.She discovered the opening of the first Royal Porttown Hospital, paid for by public subscription and with the support and patronage of Sir Charles Knyghton, Earl of Monmouth, local Lord of the Manor.
Maggie had a particular interest in anything to do with the Earl. His ancestral home, Knyghton House, one of the finest in the area, and possibly the whole of Wales, had been given to the Church when the family could no longer afford the upkeep and death duties and then turned into a boarding and day school for girls, which Maggie and Fiona had attended.
She learned that the incumbent Earl in 1875 had been a respected local benefactor. But there was no mention of John Jones, farmer, of Garth Hill. Then her eye was caught by a name she recognised, in a paper dated 1 June, 1883.
The heading was “Tragic Death of A Local Child” and told of the accidental drowning of a schoolgirl, aged twelve, Esme Ellis. The article described the place of death as a local lake popular with children, known as The Pond, and gave a dire warning to parents to forbid their children to stray there unsupervised.
Maggie was immediately drawn to the story. She knew right away that this was one of the children whose graves she had seen a week ago, when she searched the cemetery for John and Ruth. It was the grave where Alice said she saw a funeral taking place, and close enough to
the name that Alice had cried out in her nightmares almost nightly since that day. She had been shouting the name “Ezzy.” Alice remembered nothing each morning. Indeed, she’d seemed calm and serene.
Maggie read through the information carefully, and nearly shouted out in excitement, limiting herself instead to a high-pitched squeak, when she found the first piece of information that gave her a clue about her family. Esme Ellis’s father was a worker on the estate of “local farmer, Mr John Jones, a well-known and respected resident of the community of Garth Hill.” So there it was, the first piece of evidence of events in the life of John Jones’s family. The first connection.
The squeak had not gone unnoticed by Eileen down at the librarian’s desk, and she walked across to see what was happening. She listened with interest then read through the article herself. She suggested how Maggie might cross reference the report with other articles about the tragedy, and also about John Jones, and suddenly stopped in mid-sentence. The expression on her face dropped as her ears picked up the main doors’ opening, followed immediately by a cessation of all noise from the other users.
Maggie picked up a strange noise coming from somewhere at the front of the reference room, behind the filing cabinets. It was a methodical clicking that moved along behind the furthest row of cabinets, then turned and moved down the next row, getting louder as it reached the row closest to Maggie and Eileen. Maggie saw that the librarian’s face had tensed into a tighter grimace the closer the clicking came to them. She watched, intrigued, waiting to discover the cause of the approaching noise and reason for Eileen’s discomfort.
From behind the closest filing cabinet came marching at great speed a very short woman, barely five-feet tall, sporting purple, six-inch stiletto shoes that brought her almost to Maggie’s height. She possessed an hour glass figure but greatly exaggerated, with a huge bust, a tiny waist, well-rounded hips, and a thrusting walk that ensured that anyone would get out of her way as quickly as they could. Maggie was fascinated by the woman’s face and hairstyle. Her jet black hair was piled high on top of a small head in a coiffure and dressed with jewelled clips. She had a long, beaky nose, slightly protruding teeth, and high cheekbones. As she walked she led with her chin, which was in line with her bust. She was smartly dressed in a two-piece black designer suit, and immaculately made up. Maggie guessed her age to be around sixty.
She marched straight at Maggie and the librarian and stopped with a stamp of her feet in front of them. Her small, dark, and piercing eyes stared straight at Eileen, but she said nothing, just held up Maggie’s note. Maggie waited to see who would give in first.
“This lady wishes to speak to you, Mrs… Trevear,” muttered the librarian, turning to walk away, her shoulders hunched, defeated.
The woman smiled a thin smile at Eileen’s back. She signalled with a sideways nod of her head for Maggie to go to the Family History desk. She walked around and sat at the opposite side. Maggie left her microfiche and followed over to the desk as indicated, fascinated and amused, and a little awed. Here was Noleen’s “gorgon”.
“Well, what do you want?” There was neither preamble, nor introduction, just a cold stare.
“I’m trying to trace my family history and I need some help,” Maggie began, but got no further.
“Well, obviously. Why else would you be here? Get on with it, then.”
Maggie was thrown, not sure what she was supposed to say next. “I’m not really sure where to start.”
“Try the beginning.” The tone was bored sarcasm.
Maggie surveyed the woman for a moment. She was annoyed by the aggressive rudeness, and half-inclined to stand up and leave. But something stopped her. She was not to be put off by oddity, and this little woman was certainly odd. She was not easily rebuffed, either. Then Maggie Gilbert made one the most important decisions of her life. She decided to stay and tell her story.
Nine
May 1909
Three days after John’s funeral Ruth arose before dawn. Despite no longer having to worry about being there for whatever John needed, it was too soon to break the habit of being at the heart of the morning hustle and bustle. She turned up the lamps in the hall, then went to the kitchen to make a pot of tea. When it was brewed, she poured it out into her favourite Queen Victoria jubilee china cup, then walked to the drawing room.
She left the curtains closed at the front but opened up the back of the room. The maid would arrive soon to light the fires and prepare breakfastMaud and her children would wake at any moment, but for now the room was cold and empty, and silent, apart from the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway.
Ruth pulled her old shawl, in which she had wrapped herself every morning for innumerable years, tightly around her shoulders and sat in the rocking chair facing the garden at the back of the house, waiting for dawn to unfold before her.
The shawl had been a gift from John, to mark the first anniversary of their earliest smallholding. How proud she had been to receive this token of their growing prosperity. In those days, despite being so much more financially comfortable, they were still not accustomed to the luxury of buying a spontaneous gift.
He had used a journey to market in Cardiff to buy it for her, and had taken great care to buy the best he could find. It was beautifully woven and fringed in red, green and gold, made of the best Welsh wool.
At first, Ruth refused to wear it except on special occasions. She felt a little scandalised by what might be viewed by others as a sinful waste, knowing how some people thought at chapel. John had laughed at her.
“When did my proud girl become so worried about what the old ones will say?”
She was angry with him. “You expect me to flaunt luxury in their faces?” With that, she had flung the gift back at him. “You know what they’ll be saying behind our backs!”
She smiled now, remembering his contrite expression and how far she had allowed him to go in his apology before she stopped him. Then she’d smiled and promised to wear it every Sunday and on her birthday.
Now her shawl was threadbare, the colours hardly recognisable, and barely kept her warm. But the love that had bought it sustained her always, and particularly recently. As she clutched it around her shoulders, she bowed her head, closed her eyes, and tried to remember the comfort of John’s embrace. But no comfort came. She stopped and looked up through window. He was gone. No point reminiscing. She had to carry on without him, and this didn’t help.
The first light from the east lit up the top of the mountain and was beginning to spread down towards the house. A jangle and thump told her the front door was being opened. Cerys, their maid, had arrived. Soon the daily flurry would begin, but Ruth still had a little time to herself. She shivered slightly. Although it was May, icy dew covered the lawn and the fields.
Ruth caught sight of herself in the window and sat forwards, to examine her reflection. “I’m an old woman,” she thought in surprise, noting the strands of grey in her dark brown hair and the lines on her face. The strain of the last six months, from John’s sudden illness to his death, had narrowed and pinched her face. She’d tried to hide it from him as much as possible, show him a calm, smiling façade, and speak quietly and with as much dignity as she could manage. She hoped he hadn’t noticed how tired, how grey she became as his illness intensified. In the latter stages, his pain became so excruciating that most of the time he had been insensate from the laudanum. “Just as well,” Ruth thought grimly.
The cancer attacked from the inside out, growing out of his intestines in a monstrous carbuncle. Eventually barely able to eat or drink, he shrank to a shell of a man, hardly recognisable as human. His hair fell out and the pain twisted his face into a grotesque caricature of an animal begging to be put out of its misery.
As she watched this relentless decline, Ruth fought to keep in the forefront of her mind the splendid figure he had been when they met. Not tall, but with a strength of character that marked him out. She had admired his full head of d
ark brown hair, his beautiful moustache, the way his chin was always raised. His demeanour gave him the look of a confident, self-assured man. Some thought him high-minded and aloof, but Ruth had discovered a quiet sense of humour and shyness.
She also came to know that when John made up his mind about something he was unmoveable, truly believing in his own sense of what was right and just. Ruth never blamed John for his implacability, even when it caused him to take the wrong course of action, with disastrous results. She believed, now, that he had come to regret his refusal to change his mind, although he never said so.
She was eight years younger than John and little more than a girl when she married him at eighteen. Now, she was a fifty-five-year-old widow. John left her well provided for, but she realised that if she had the constitution of her maternal family, she too would live into her eighties. That frightened her. The thought of thirty years without him was unbearable. Ruth knew herself to be a strong woman, in body as well as spirit. After a farming life and six children she was still sturdy. But the strain of John’s illness had so worn her down that she had lost a great deal of weight. Lately, she found herself struggling to walk far before shortness of breath forced her to rest. She had to regain her strength quickly, particularly now that she had something to do. Something that she could not do when John was alive.
The clock in the hall chimed seven. She could hear movement above. Evan, Ruth and John’s youngest son, would be up and preparing for school. An industrious scholar, he was determined to make up what he had missed recently. He wanted to be a schoolmaster and needed to take his matriculation exam in a few weeks’ time.
