Worlds Between

by Sherry D. Ficklin

  I tried Blodwyn a few times before I actually got her, my own eagerness to see what little miss perfect got up to in her spare time making me all the more determined. I wasn’t surprised to find that she was just as shallow in private as she was in public. Blod spent most of her free time doing and re-doing her hair into different styles from her magazine, trying on clothes and practising dance steps to the radio in her bedroom. I also learned through these little trips that the young farm boys Idrys had taken on for the winter were throwing love letters into her window attached to little stones. She laughed at them all, the boys were only about my age, and wrote things back like ‘No chance mochyn’ and ‘When you start to shave, we’ll see’.

  I’d be lying to say I didn’t envy the attention; the farm boys treated me like a leper at worst and a statue at best, either way I was something to be avoided. But then what chance did I have with a newly-adult Celtic goddess flouncing about the place? The only thing that really surprised me about Blod was that she was, sometimes, actually nice to her sister. In the public parts of the house and when she was doing her chores, Ness was just constantly in Blod’s way and consequently was always being shouted at. But when Blod was upstairs having a break Ness quite often wandered into her room uninvited. The first time it happened I expected to feel Blod hit the roof and order the little wanderer out forthwith. But despite the huge age gap between them, Blod was actually quite a good sister when she thought no-one could see. She let Ness put some of her make-up on and let her bounce on her bed to the radio tunes. Sometimes she even sat and talked to her.

  When those moments happened I let her mind go, too jealous of the sisterly bond to stay and listen in. I had Leighton, of course, but it wasn’t the same. And girl chat made me think of Mum too, for that matter. I had noticed a strange thing on that score whilst I was practising my visits. Out of any of the new minds that I had tried to reach in Bryn Eira Bach, none of them gave me the splitting headaches that I got from reaching Mum in London. I was tired certainly, after every encounter, but there was never so much pain as when I took my mind to hers. I pondered if it could be the distance between us that hurt so much, but the visits I made in half-sleep took me to all sorts of places much farther than London and I never woke up crying from those.

  ***

  By the time the snow set in and Christmas loomed on the horizon, I felt I was ready for some serious new challenges. Mam had given me a few little chores to do in the house as my arms grew stronger, just polishing things or peeling vegetables before dinner, but I still had more time alone in December than I knew what to do with. Once Leighton was off school things were better and there were no shortage of preparations to be made for a Price family Christmas. Things went especially mad on the 22nd when Mam received a telegram delivered from the village post office.

  “Clive and the boys are coming home for Christmas dinner!”

  I was most keen to meet RAF Flight Sergeant Clive Price, so when they arrived on the morning of Christmas Eve I gave it my best effort to wheel myself out into the hall before anyone had to fetch me. I was so successful that Mam tripped over me when she came out to wait by the door herself, but she was good natured enough to congratulate me on the effort all the same.

  “Oh Doctor Bickerstaff will be pleased with you,” she observed.

  I didn’t care a fig for how the rotten doctor felt; I was just interested in keeping him from causing me trouble.

  The door of Ty Gwyn burst open, bringing a flurry of cold, snowy air into the hall that made me shiver all over. The blast let in three tall, strapping figures in smart blue uniforms, the tallest of which slammed the door behind him. Clive’s smiling face was red with the morning frost as he took off his blue officer’s hat and hung up a huge overcoat that he had been carrying. It was clear that he and his sons hadn’t wanted the sight of their uniforms to be obscured as they made their way here. Mam rushed to Clive with an explosion of pride and relief, hugging him repeatedly before it was the turn of her sons to have their bones crushed.

  I knew that Thomas was the blonde one and also the eldest child. He had a handsome face with a lot of Blodwyn’s features and the same pale blue eyes that ran through the whole family. The other son, two years younger at twenty-two, was Ieuan, which I had learned to say as Yai-yan in the run up to meeting him. He had Idrys’s gingery look, but with Clive’s long nose and square jaw.

  “You must be Kit,” Ieuan said when Mam had released him. He shook my hand very gently. “Mam must’ve written a hundred letters about you and your brother being yur. I feel like I know you already.”

  “Pleased to meet you Ieuan,” I replied with a smile.

  There was a lot of bustling as Idrys, Ness and Blod each got their hugs whilst Leighton and I were introduced to the boys. It was a long time before everyone had spoken to everyone and we were all stood frozen in the black and white hall by the time they were all settled again. Clive and the boys were exhausted from their overnight journey across North Wales in the back of a truck, so Mam packed them off to bed each with a cup of tea and a biscuit and set about making a huge welcome home dinner. Idrys tried to put her off since we’d already be having a huge lunch the next day, but she wouldn’t be deterred.

  I had gotten used to a full table of food at Ty Gwyn, but now that her boys were home I finally understood Mam’s tendency to overprovide. Clive, Thomas and Ieuan ate like they had been starving in the desert for weeks on end, consuming everything in their immediate vicinity and then asking for more, which Mam dutifully provided. Leighton seemed very glad to be at my end of the table where his share was safe from them, but as he gave me one of his cheeky looks, his eyes fell to my hands and he frowned.

  “What’s happened to your skin?” he asked in a whisper.

  I looked down, horrified to see a peculiar salmon-coloured rash spreading in blotches over my left hand. I pulled up the sleeve of my jumper to find it was travelling there too. It had happened before, now and then, just small patches, on my leg or on my tummy, but never anywhere that anyone could see, and certainly not on such a scale. Doctor Baxendale had told me it was just something some people got. I shoved my hand under the table, eating with only my fork.

  “It’s fine,” I told Leighton, “Get on with your dinner.”

  But it wasn’t fine, it was hideous. And, worse than that, I was starting to feel very hot in my jumper. Clammy beads of sweat formed under my hair at the nape of my neck, but if I took off the jumper now then someone besides Leighton was sure to notice the rash and make a fuss. It would most likely fade like it had in times gone by, so the last thing I wanted to do was make a spectacle of myself, especially with new people at the table. It had taken the last four months to get used to the first half of the Price family, I didn’t want to make an odd impression on the rest.

  But the heat grew as dinner went on; I was starting to think it wasn’t just the jumper. I could feel sweat behind my knees under the table, even my feet were clammy in my shoes. When I checked under the table, the blotchy pink rash was also on my legs and in the space of fifteen minutes at the table it was suddenly on my right hand too. Mam was so thrilled to have her boys back that she hardly looked at anyone else, that was until I dropped my fork and it went clattering onto the plate loudly.

  “Sorry,” I said clumsily, my eyes shifting in and out of focus as I tried to find her at the busy table, “Excuse me.”

  I reached forward for the fork, but when I went to grab it my blotchy hand didn’t seem to find the right place.

  “What on earth’s wrong with her?” Blod demanded. Her voice echoed in my head.

  The room was suddenly darker. I wanted to ask who had switched off the lights.

  “Oh my God,” said Mam somewhere very far away, “Somebody phone the doctor!”

  The next thing I was aware of was the sight of the black beams of the ceiling in my downstairs bedroom. My eyes flickered open six or seven times before I could get them to actually stay open, so when they did I let them f
ocus on the ceiling for a while as I tried to remember what had happened. I noticed as I lay in the bed that I wasn’t wearing my splints, so I shifted my weight around to see if any damage had been done when I presumably collapsed out of my chair at the dinner table. I was still horribly sweaty all over, my limbs were weak and though I could move them it was a terrible strain.

  “Ah, good afternoon,” said a voice I recognised beside me.

  I turned my head too quickly, feeling dizzy and sick. Doctor Bickerstaff. He wasn’t wearing his usual doctor’s attire, just a woolly jumper and a pair of corduroy trousers. He had a book on his lap and his face was terribly haggard. He looked as tired as I felt and a thick layer of blonde stubble covered his jaw.

  Good afternoon, he had said. If I had collapsed on Christmas Eve, then that could mean only one thing.

  “I’ve ruined their Christmas,” I said, my voice tiny and weak. It was too exhausting to be sad; the words came out flat and dry.

  “No, they’re fine,” Bickerstaff said in his proper tone, “They’re all downstairs around the wireless waiting for the King’s Christmas message. You’ve only ruined my Christmas, and I daresay you’ll feel a lot less guilty about that.”

  “Sorry,” I whispered. He was right, but I did feel a little bad for him in spite of everything.

  “Don’t worry, it wasn’t much of one to ruin.”

  There was no invitation to press the topic any further, but of course I knew that he lived alone without him having to tell me. Bickerstaff put the back of his hand across my forehead and I could feel my damp skin sticking to him.

  “Do you feel hot or cold right now?” he asked.

  “Cold,” I replied, “What’s happened to me?”

  “Fevers and rashes are not uncommon symptoms for people with your condition,” he replied clinically. There was no trace of empathy in his face whatsoever.

  “I used to get fevers when I first got sick,” I replied. He just nodded. I didn’t feel feverish now, just sticky and horrid.

  The door to the bedroom opened and Ness Fach ambled in wearing what looked like a new dress. Doctor Bickerstaff turned in his chair to see her. She watched him carefully for a moment, sucking on the hand of her Dolly.

  “Hello little one,” he said in what he must have thought was a warmer tone. It didn’t sound much different to his usual one.

  Ness ran away without a word. Bickerstaff’s mouth twitched awkwardly a little, and he was about to speak to me again when yet another visitor appeared in the wide doorway.

  “Oh she’s awake then,” Blod said, her look was not relieved in the least, “Mam sent me to see if you wanted another cuppa.”

  Doctor Bickerstaff stood up and brushed off his jumper, forgetting the book on his lap which dropped to the floor with a thud. His mouth twitched again as he looked at Blod.

  “No, no,” he stammered. Was he nervous of something? “I daresay Kit’ll be up and about by this evening. Her fever’s broken, so I’ll be going once I’ve spoken to your mother.”

  Blod eyed him with the kind of contempt she usually reserved for me, which was a nice change, I’ll admit.

  “All right then,” she said, quickly turning on her perfect heels to sweep away.

  Bickerstaff looked at the space where she’d been standing for a moment before he turned back to me. I knew I was giving him what must have been a rather rude, quizzical look, but he chose not to challenge it.

  “I’m curious as to what brought this fever on, Kit,” he said, his face falling back into its relaxed emotionless template, “Your physical progress isn’t good enough to suggest overexertion. Have you strained yourself in any other way?”

  “Peeling a potato is a strain in my world, doctor,” I answered, “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

  “Well what about mental strain?” he pressed, a glimmer of annoyance hanging on his lip. He wanted to sneer, I was sure of it, but for some reason he was holding it back. “Have you been reading a lot or doing something else that uses your concentration?”

  “I have been reading a lot,” I lied quickly, “There’s not much else to do here.” Of course I knew the real answer to his question.

  “Well that could be bringing it on,” he explained, “A relaxed mind does wonders for one’s health, see that you remember that.”

  I would, if it meant stopping him from invading Ty Gwyn ever again. I watched him pick up his things and go, already formulating a new way to balance my mental training and keep my brain strain-free the rest of the time. The fever had been awful, but now that it was over there was a lesson to be learned and more practice to be done. But first, I remembered, there were a few hours left of my first Welsh Christmas to enjoy.

  ***

  The New Year brought plenty of nasty shocks with it, including the introduction of rationing, which sat about as well with Mam as the idea of birth control did with the Pope. Mam said that she was terribly grateful that Clive and the boys had been home at the right time before the government had taken control of how much food each household could have, but she couldn’t imagine what she would feed them the next time they came for a visit. I felt sad that I had only spent a few hours with them before their scheduled return on Boxing Day, but she assured me they would come again when they could. Leighton was hit almost as hard as Mam by the news that he could no longer have a snack at every hour of the day and night.

  “But this is farm isn’t it?” he protested, “What you grow and make here should belong to you, not the Prime Minister!”

  Idrys fielded the question until Leighton understood the problem of feeding all the soldiers defending us whilst also compensating for the supply chains that had been cut off from some parts of Europe. “This is how we do our part for the war!” he explained proudly, and Leighton seemed happy with that, even if his stomach disagreed.

  In the time it took for winter to change into spring I had once again honed my mind-hopping skills to overcome the new obstacles in my path. By staying away from Mum and the painful connection to London I had reduced my raging fevers to nothing but mild sweats, which kept Doctor Bickerstaff away from the house right up until the start of April, when he turned up out of the blue and spent a very long time talking to Mam in the kitchen. I resisted the urge to step into his head and listen to what he was telling her, and I was sincerely glad I had when Mam told me later that I wasn’t making enough physical progress and the doctor asked ‘could I please try a bit harder when I had the time’. I was certain Doctor Bickerstaff hadn’t been that kind in the phrasing of his request.

  I could have been annoyed, but the doctor didn’t matter to me that day; I had bigger fish to fry. Leighton was at school and the family were going out shopping for a new dress for Blodwyn’s birthday. The house was mine for three solid hours uninterrupted. And I was going to try to reach the German soldier at last.

  I had been very nervous of trying to reach Germany in my head in case it brought on a fever, but April the 9th had a feeling about it, like the time was right. I felt unusually healthy as I settled myself in the sitting room, pushing the door shut behind me. I could wheel myself much better than what I had shown the doctor, or anyone else, so I put my chair in the centre of the room and turned away from the bright afternoon light in the windows to prepare for the usual routine.

  Palms up. Eyes shut. In and out and in and out.

  I tried to remember the German’s great hairy hands, the billows of smoke from his cigar, the nerves he felt when his commanding officer pointed to the map. Pointed to that jagged coast, that little red dot marked Oslo.

  It was a grey day, wherever I was. Great silver clouds hung low in the sky as I looked out into a city through someone else’s eyes. It wasn’t England; I knew that by the grand old buildings in red brick or cream coloured stone. They were not the slate grey spires of London; there was something much more traditional to their style. The eyes I was looking through belonged to someone standing at a second floor window looking down into a wide
boulevard lined with huge green trees.

  I had a feeling I had not found the hairy handed German I was in search of, the emotions running through this body were far easier for me to interpret than his had been. The body was quivering against the cold air streaming in from the half-open window, a steady but quickened pulse racing in its veins. One look down revealed a pair of hands wringing together nervously. They were smooth and a little tanned with the lightest dusting of brown hair starting at the wrists, climbing up to two strong arms. A male, for certain, and quite young judging by the lack of blemishes on his skin.

  The fearful young man gazed out into the grey street again where I noticed there were very few people out and about. One small clump of pedestrians gathered under the leafy trees, looking expectantly out into the road, which was totally devoid of traffic. They were waiting for something. Somebody spoke in the room I was in and the boy turned his head to glance at the speaker. The room looked like a store room for fabrics and such; it contained a crowd of some two-dozen people who were all craning to see out of the window into the silent street. They muttered nervously in a guttural sounding tongue that I didn’t understand. Not German, I decided; my attempt to focus on the specific target had failed.

  But I wanted to stay all the same; I had to know what this foreign mass was waiting for. What did they expect to come down their beautiful boulevard? And why did they await it behind bricks and glass? The boy I inhabited grew more nervous by the minute; I could feel him rubbing his palms together, his keen eyes expanding as he spotted a disturbance at the far end of the street. He pointed, shouting something foreign in a rich, smooth voice. Everyone crowded closer to the tall glass windows for a better view.