The Earth Hums in B Flat (13 page)

‘What a quaint child you are, my dear,' says Mrs Llywelyn Pugh as she wraps the dead fox around her throat.

But I have an idea. I know what to do to give the dead fox a decent burial and save its spirit. I only have to wait for the Festival. Alwenna can help me. I look at Mam in excitement but she stares at me with that tight look on her face that means she's cross with me again about something.

15

The sky is perfect this evening. In one of my art lessons I mixed my poster paints to make a sky exactly like this; a deep, dense blue in the high curve becoming lighter and whiter towards the edge of the Earth where the hills of Ll
n look as if they've been cut out of black paper and stuck on. Mr Parry said it was too good to be true. But here it is. I want to fly up there to see the stars burst through the blue; Orion the Great Hunter with his mighty sword, and the Milky Way almost pouring its stars on my head. Last night I didn't want to look down on the town or the sea; I floated on my back, listened to the Earth's song and looked into the sky. Where does the sky end? And where's Heaven? I never see any spirits up there. I wonder if other people live where those stars shine. Aliens. In the pictures aliens are always monsters. But what if they're just like us? Would they be monsters then?

What time is it? I'd better run to the Chapel vestry in case I'm late.

I left the house ahead of Bethan and yet here she is in the cemetery before me, huddled by the vestry door with Janet Jones the Butcher from her Sunday School class. The Voice of God hasn't arrived and the vestry is still locked. Alwenna's sitting on our favourite tombstone twirling her hair and smiling at our bêtes noires.

I stride across the grass from the vestry door to the tombstone and give Aneurin and Edwin a hard stare as I pass them. I hear them snigger as I clamber onto the tombstone and sit to face Alwenna with my back to them.

‘I was talking to them, Gwenni,' she says.

‘Those two?' I say. ‘They haven't got anything in their heads to talk about.'

‘You don't give them a chance, Gwenni,' she says. ‘And Edwin's my boyfriend now.'

Her boyfriend? I feel a stab of pain in my stomach as the cold from the tombstone creeps through my clothes. My bêtes noires have moved so that they can see Alwenna; they lean on a gravestone on the edge of the path. Alwenna turns so that she's facing them, and smiles and smiles.

I stroke the slate beneath me with my palm; it's been rubbed smooth and silky by all the children who've sat on it waiting for something or another to begin in the vestry. Aunty Lol told me she and her friends used to sit on this tombstone while they waited. I can trace some of the letters with my finger but too many of them are worn away for me to work out what they say. Some of the old tombstones tell a long tale of the life of the person buried in them, but I can't read this story. There must be hundreds of secrets locked away in the tombs and the graves around me.

‘I have to talk to you before the Voice of God gets here,' I say to Alwenna.

She sighs. ‘What about?' she says. ‘It's not more daft ideas, is it? I'm getting fed up with your daft ideas.'

I shiver; the tombstone must be even colder than I thought underneath me. ‘They're not daft,' I say. ‘Listen—' ‘Be quick, then.' Alwenna has moved so that she's half lying on the tombstone now, her arm raised to her hair. Aneurin and Edwin wolf whistle a duet at her from their gravestone. ‘And I've got something to tell you,' she says.

‘You two are a nuisance,' I say to the boys. ‘Go away.'

‘They're only messing about, Gwenni,' says Alwenna.

‘No one would whistle at you, Gwenni Morgan. You've got a face like a fox.' Of the two, Edwin is my greatest bête noire.

‘And hair like a fox's tail,' says Aneurin. Perhaps they are equally my bête noire.

They start to chant in unison, ‘Gwenni Fo-ox, Gwenni Fo-ox.' They clutch their gravestone and double up with laughter. ‘Gwenni Fo-ox.'

I turn my back on them, and ignore their noise. ‘Listen, Alwenna. I've got a really good idea for getting the dead fox away from Mrs Llywelyn Pugh. I had to go and help Mam at the Sale of Work meeting last night and guess what?'

‘What?' says Alwenna. ‘What?'

‘Mrs Llywelyn Pugh is going to be at the Singing Festival. She's helping out with the food this year.'

‘So?'

‘So we can get the fox then. She's not going to make sandwiches and serve jelly and do the washing up with her dead fox round her neck, is she? She'll have to take it off and put it down somewhere. That will be our chance.'

Alwenna stares at me without looking once towards Edwin and Aneurin. ‘You're doolally,' she says. ‘You take after your—' A loud screech makes us both jump.

The younger children have been playing tick around the graves, flitting about like pale ghosts in the dim light. Now they all stand still as the gravestones and one of them points at the line of bats flying from the vestry's roof space.

‘They'll dive at your heads and get all tangled up in your hair,' shouts Edwin.

‘No they won't,' I yell. ‘He's lying. Bats don't do that.'

But the children are not listening to me. As more and more bats stream from the vestry roof they race around the gravestones, taking great, gulping breaths and screeching like Guto'r Wern when he runs down the hill, their hands clasped around their heads.

The back door of Chapel House opens and a square of light shines out followed by the acrid smell of burnt potatoes, and Mrs Davies. She waves a blackened, smoking saucepan in our direction. ‘Look what you've made me do,' she shouts at the children. ‘Mr Davies won't be very pleased when he finds out his supper's burnt.' The screeching dies a little. ‘And stop that noise.' Mrs Davies screeches louder than the children. ‘You sound like a lot of old hens with the fox after them.'

Edwin and Aneurin collapse on each other and slither down the gravestone to the ground. They laugh and chant, ‘Gwenni Fo-ox, Gwenni Fo-ox.'

‘Come out of there,' Mrs Davies tells the children, ‘or I'll send Mr Davies out here the minute he's home.' The children quieten at that and one by one come from behind the gravestones, their heads drooping.

‘Now, then, sit on the vestry steps until the Reverend Roberts comes. And you two.' She looks at Alwenna and me. ‘You two get down from that tomb. You know it's disrespectful to sit on it.' Mrs Davies turns her back on us and goes into Chapel House and slams the door behind her. Above the cemetery the bats swirl to the reverberations. The children clutch their hands to their heads again as they sit obediently on the steps, facing Alwenna and me on the tombstone as if they were watching the Voice of God in the pulpit.

I turn to Alwenna. ‘Well?' I say. ‘Don't you think it's a good chance?'

‘I'm not doing it,' says Alwenna. ‘It's a stupid idea. All your ideas are daft. They only ever get me into trouble with people. Anyway, I've got better things to do now.'

‘Like what?' I say.

Alwenna turns and gives Edwin and Aneurin a little wave. ‘Like going for walks with Edwin,' she says.

My stomach begins to ache. Mam will be cross with me for sitting on the cold slate and making myself ill. I look at Alwenna. ‘And what about our investigations?' I say. ‘What about finding Ifan Evans?'

Alwenna doesn't reply. She pulls a face at me and slides off the tombstone, her skirt dragging up and her stocking-tops showing. Stockings to the Band of Hope, even?

‘Alwenna?' I say.

‘I tried to tell you,' she says. ‘They found Ifan Evans teatime. Drowned in the Reservoir. Just think, we've been drinking him for days.'

I can't speak. I feel the bile burning its way up my throat and I vomit across the tombstone and its worn-out history. A sweet sour smell steams into the air. I hear some of the children on the steps retch in sympathy.

‘Gwenni, Gwenni,' the Voice of God booms from the twilight. ‘Bethan, you'd better walk her home. Your mam will know best what to do for her.'

PART TWO

16

Bethan pushes me into the house, her fist hard in the small of my back. Mam and Tada sit each side of the fire. Tada reads the
Daily
Herald
, his legs stretched out, his feet resting on the fender. One of his grey socks has a hole in the heel that Nain would mend if she knew about it. Mam knits the fuzzy-wuzzy bolero for Aunty Siân's little Helen that was supposed to be finished for Easter. She has her special cushion in her lap under the knitting; the pink one with the faded red roses on it. For a second, from the doorway of the living room, I see Mam and Tada as if they were a picture in a frame. Blue bits from the fuzzy-wuzzy float in the air like lazy insects. They always make me sneeze; my nose itches as I stand here.

They both turn towards me at the same time. Mam drops her knitting and half gets up from her chair. The firelight flickers on her bouncy yellow curls, and they gleam like Nain's brasses.

‘It's nothing to do with me,' says Bethan, giving me another push. ‘I wasn't anywhere near her. She was talking to Alwenna and then she threw up all over the tombstone they were sitting on. The Voice of God said I had to bring her home. I don't know why she couldn't bring herself home.'

‘Look at the state of you,' says Mam. ‘And the smell. Look at your school mackintosh. How am I going to get that in a fit state for you to wear again?'

‘Are you all right, Gwenni?' says Tada. He stands up and folds his
Daily Herald
and pushes it under his seat. ‘Let's get you out of that old coat.'

‘Let her do it herself,' says Mam. ‘Look at her, vomit all down the front of it.'

‘She's disgusting,' says Bethan. ‘I'm going to Nain's; I can't stand the stink.'

‘Hold on,' says Tada. ‘What happened exactly?'

Bethan shoves me again. ‘She's a baby. She threw up because Alwenna told her Ifan Evans was found in the Reservoir.'

‘Ifan?' says Mam. ‘What do you mean, found in the Reservoir? Is he all right?'

‘Alwenna said he'd been there since he disappeared,' says Bethan. She turns and goes out through the front door. ‘I'm going next door. I bet Nain hasn't heard yet or she'd have been round to tell you.'

Mam has her hand over her mouth. Her nails dig into her face, making flares of white in her skin.

Tada puts his arm around her and pats her on the shoulder, ‘Deep breath, sweetheart,' he says. ‘Take a deep breath.'

‘Alwenna says we've been drinking him for days,' I say. The thought makes me retch and I run through into the scullery and heave over the sink. There's nothing left to come up. I wipe my face with Tada's damp flannel; it's cold and rough and smells of his Lifebuoy soap. I'd like a drink of water but what if Ifan Evans's maggots come through the tap?

The faces in the distemper have all grown long ears to listen all the better with. I scurry past them into the living room. Mam sits shivering in her armchair. She shivers all over like Mrs Evans did when she had her teeth out. On their high shelf the Toby jugs lean over and watch Mam through narrowed eyes.

‘It's the shock,' says Tada, still patting her shoulder. ‘Well, it's a shock for us all.' Is that what made me throw up? I didn't like Ifan Evans, but he's the only person I know who's drowned.

‘What can have happened to him?' says Mam, and I have to reach forward towards her to hear what she says. Her face is white and there are red blotches where her nails dug into her skin. The scent of Evening in Paris is strong and my head begins to throb.

‘He must have fallen in somehow,' says Tada. ‘Perhaps he couldn't swim.' He sighs, then turns to me. ‘Gwenni, come and sit in my chair, here by the fire. The warmth will make you feel better.'

I can smell the vomit on my coat and its sour taste is still in the back of my throat. Tada takes off my coat and folds it so that the sick is all hidden. He carries it through into the scullery and opens the back door and leaves it in the lean-to. I sit in Tada's chair. I burrow into the warmth he's left behind and the scent of his soap and his tobacco. A log crackles on the fire and spits tiny flares out of the grate. Tada rushes back from the scullery and stamps out the glowing embers on the linoleum.