The Earth Hums in B Flat (16 page)

‘Lol. Lol,' he mutters, still half asleep, and opens one small eye.

‘I'll give you Lol, you silly bird,' says Nain.

‘Mrs Evans's family is dead,' I say. ‘Like Mam's. She's just got her sister, and Mam's got Aunty Siân.'

‘I believe Elin Evans lost both her parents when she was young,' says Nain. ‘And that's not a secret. Now let me open that cage door.'

Nain unlatches the cage door and Lloyd George shuffles along his perch to the opening. I grab my Lion notebook and Tada's socks and move towards the scullery.

‘And you mind your Ps and Qs when you're up at Brwyn Coch,' says Nain. ‘You can upset people by asking too many questions, you know.' She pokes at Lloyd George who doesn't want to leave his cage tonight.

‘Not Mrs Evans,' I say. ‘She says you have to ask if you don't understand things.'

‘Isn't that just like a school teacher?' says Nain.

Lloyd George squawks and nips Nain's finger before hurtling out of his cage with his skinny black legs pointing at my head and his claws extended to land. I bolt through the scullery door, slamming it shut behind me.

19

Tada stretches in his armchair, pointing his toes at the fire with the socks that Nain mended on his feet.

‘Nowhere like home,' he says, ‘Nothing like Friday evening with Saturday and Sunday stretching out before you. Lovely.'

‘Lovely for some,' says Mam. She knits faster. She's almost finished little Helen's bolero at last. Wisps of fuzzy-wuzzy float like thistledown from Mam's lap onto John Morris's nose and he sneezes and comes out from under her legs and crawls under Tada's chair. Pale blue filaments spiral up on the heat of the fire and stroke the faces of the Toby jugs as they pass.

‘You'll be all right tomorrow, won't you?' says Tada. ‘You always enjoy the Singing Festival, Magda.'

‘Some people's husbands go with them,' says Mam. She heaves the knitting around on the pink cushion in her lap to begin a new row. The fuzzy-wuzzy is beginning to tickle my nose, too.

‘Come on, Magda,' says Tada. ‘We go through this every year. You know I'm not a chapel man.'

‘It's that old football,' says Mam. Her knitting needles clack faster and faster.

‘I daresay they'd have more men there if they didn't hold it on Cup Final day,' says Tada. ‘But not me.'

‘Are you going to see the game on Mr Williams's television?' I ask.

‘Like going to the pictures, eh, Gwenni? Lovely.' Tada stretches again. ‘Special match this year, too. A sad day for United. They've done well to keep going after that terrible plane crash.'

‘I don't know how Robin Williams's wife can let you all into her parlour with your big feet to yell and shout,' says Mam.

‘Only seven of us, Magda,' says Tada. ‘Anyway, she won't know anything about it, will she? She'll be at the Singing Festival with you.'

Tada pushes himself up from his chair and takes his tobacco tin from the mantelpiece and begins to roll a cigarette. I breathe in the scent of his Golden Virginia instead of the smell of the fish we had for supper.

‘When's Bethan coming home from what's-her-name's, then?' he says.

I open my mouth to answer him, but Mam glares at me and says, ‘Caroline, her name's Caroline. You know that. Bethan will be back by nine.'

Mam doesn't believe what Alwenna told me about Bethan. And I was going to say Caroline, not Richard.

‘Well,' says Tada. He lights his cigarette from the fire with a spill and comes round behind his chair to the table and looks at the roll of paper I've unfurled. ‘That's a big sheet of paper you've got there, Gwenni,' he says. ‘Where did you get that?'

‘It's lots of sheets glued together to make one big one. See?' I point out the joins to him.

‘Very tidy,' he says. ‘What are you going to do with it?'

‘Draw our family tree,' I say. I pull out my notebook from under the sheet and open it to where Mrs Evans has shown me how to make a family tree. ‘You're a leaf on it, and so is Mam. And so am I. And Bethan. But I have to find all the other leaves to go on it before us.'

‘That's very clever, Gwenni. Did you do that at school?'

‘No. Mrs Evans drew this tree in my notebook for me to copy. She gave me the paper and glue and helped me make this big sheet.'

Mam's needles have stopped clacking and the room is quiet apart from the hissing of the wood on the fire and the tick-tock of the mantelpiece clock. The Toby jugs yawn on the top shelf.

Tada draws on his cigarette and blows smoke rings into the air. The smell of the smoke mingles with the smell of fish. Samuel Fish's van brings fresh fish round every Friday morning but Tada says there's no telling when the fish was fresh. John Morris always eats the heads with their staring eyes. Sometimes they smell like the fish in my night-time sea. Sometimes they smell like blood. I won't think about the blood.

‘Will you put down that I can blow perfect smoke rings?' Tada says, blowing some more.

‘No,' I say. ‘You're only supposed to put down when someone is born and when they get married and what children they have and when they . . .' I look at Mam but she's staring at the fire with her knitting needles quiet in her hands.

‘Die,' says Tada.

‘Yes,' I say.

But why can't a family tree record other things? Things that are passed down like noses and hair and freckles and religious mania and blowing smoke rings and whistling and being clever and flying.

‘Let's have a look at what you've got so far, then,' says Tada and draws my notebook towards him. He reads out loud the names Nain told me.

‘Is this what you were doing next door last night?' he says.

I nod. ‘But I think Nain's missed out a lot, hasn't she?'

‘I expect we can fill in the missing bits, Gwenni,' he says. He smoothes the big sheet flat on the chenille tablecloth. ‘You'll have to take this cloth off if you're going to write on here or your pencil will make a hole in the paper.' He pulls the cloth out from under and drapes it on the back of his chair. ‘It was very good of Mrs Evans to spend time doing this with you when she's got so many troubles.'

‘She says it helps her to do something different,' I say.

‘Gwenni should stop going up there,' says Mam. She drops her knitting on her pink cushion. Her fingers tap and tap on the wooden arms of her chair. ‘Heaven knows what goes on up there. You should never have agreed to let her go to look after those children. I don't like her being mixed up with that woman. People will begin to talk, if they're not talking already.'

Tada takes his cigarette from between his lips and pinches the lit end and puts the rest of it behind his ear. He pushes his family hair back from his forehead. ‘The poor woman can't help what's happened to her husband, Magda.'

‘Poor woman. Huh,' says Mam. ‘What did she do to make him leave so fast he fell in the Reservoir? Have you thought about that?'

‘Well,' Tada says. He gazes at Mam. She gets up and goes to the scullery and comes back with two chunks of wood for the fire and throws them into the grate where they fizz and crackle then spit like a jumping jack.

Tada stamps the linoleum. ‘Why can't we go back to coal?' he says.

‘Because wood is cheap and I have to save money somehow if I'm going to have a better house than this, with an electric cooker and a bathroom,' says Mam.

Tada sighs. I begin to roll up my sheet of paper.

‘Don't do that, Gwenni,' Tada says. ‘Let's have a proper look.'

He studies the tree Mrs Evans drew and then looks at my big sheet of paper. ‘You've got plenty of room on here to make the tree much bigger. You could make it taller if Nain could remember a bit further back.' He reads the names Nain gave me again. ‘I can fill in some of these gaps,' he says. ‘But I'm no good with dates.' He stares at the list, lost in a place I can't see. ‘The Chapel cemetery is the best place for the dates,' he says. ‘Everyone's buried there. And there's that box of photographs on top of the wardrobe; I'll get it down for you. You can match the faces to some of the names.'

‘That's your family,' I say. I look at Mam. She's sitting in her chair again, her knitting still on her cushion. She's watching the fire, her lips moving slightly as if she's memorising a poem for school. I whisper in Tada's ear, ‘What about Mam's? Where are they all buried? Where are all their pictures?'

‘Not now, Gwenni,' he murmurs. Then, in his cheerful voice, he says, ‘Look, you can leave some room at the bottom, too. Here, see? After your name and Bethan's you can put the names of your husbands and your children in years to come.'

‘I'm not going to get married,' I say. ‘I hate boys.'

‘I expect you'll change your mind when you're older, Gwenni,' he says.

But I won't.

Tada puts his hand on Mam's shoulder when he passes her to slip back into his chair by the fire but she shrugs it off. The
Daily Herald
rustles as Tada picks it up from the floor. John Morris crawls from under the chair and strolls towards the scullery, his tail flicking from side to side. He's having no peace tonight. Perhaps he'll finish his fish head before I go through, then I won't have to see its staring eyes.

I pull out my pencil case from my satchel, and my long ruler, and begin to draw a tree the way Mrs Evans showed me. Maybe I will make it look a bit more like a real tree. It will have the past, the present and the future of our family on it. But will it ever have the whole story? Will it ever have all the secrets and all the truth?

20

‘I'm glad I decided to wear my old costume again,' says Mam. ‘There's a chill in the air this morning.' She squints at the cloudy sky, and says in English, ‘Don't cast a clout until May is out.' With both hands she pulls at the waves above her ears so that they're below her blue felt hat with its silly speckled feather. ‘That's better,' she says. But it isn't.

I offer Mam the huge cake tin she made me carry from the house. The cakes for the Singing Festival have got pink icing and hundreds and thousands. The doctor's tablets haven't helped Mam to cook any better than deep breathing did. She ignores me.

‘Now, Bethan,' she says. ‘When the charabanc comes I want you to sit in the front seat with Gwenni and keep an eye on her.'

‘What?' says Bethan. ‘Why do I have to do that?' She stamps her foot. ‘It's not fair. I want to sit with Janet.'

‘And you,' says Mam to me. ‘I don't want any of your silly nonsense. Just you mind what you say to people.'

I don't say anything. The cake tin's weight makes my arms ache; I shift it to a different position. We stand in silence at the foot of our hill. Mam smiles at nothing because she's just taken her tablet and Bethan sulks because she has to sit with me in the charabanc. I want to sit with Alwenna. Will Alwenna want to sit with me? Or will she want to sit with Edwin the horse and Aneurin on the back seat?

A rattling and screeching breaks the silence. The racket gradually grows louder until the charabanc lurches around the corner towards us. It doesn't usually make so much noise. We step back out of its way.

Mam turns to me and takes the cake tin. ‘I'll be keeping my eye on you,' she says.

With a blare of its horn the charabanc stops next to us. Mam climbs the steps and then stops dead at the top. Through the windows Bethan and I can see that the charabanc is already full of people.

‘Hooray,' says Bethan and she pushes past me and Mam and disappears into the smoke-filled back of the bus. I climb the steps and stand behind Mam.

‘Hurry up,' says the driver to Mam.

‘Who are you?' says Mam. ‘Where's Wil? He always picks up here first.'

‘Broke his leg,' says the driver. He pats tenderly at the quiff that vibrates on his head in time to the engine. ‘I'm Ned. Doing him a favour. Doing you a favour.'

Mam looks down over the cake tin at his quiff and his bootlace tie. ‘Are you sure you know what you're doing? You look too young to be in charge of a charabanc,' she says. ‘And where are we supposed to sit?'

‘Magda! Magda!' Nanw Lipstick waves with her cigarette from halfway down the charabanc. ‘I've kept a seat for you here, Magda.' She points at the seat next to hers. Even from here I can see the bright red stain of lipstick on her cigarette.

Mam looks round. There is no other seat except one at the very front next to Deilwen. Her mother and father sit across the aisle in the other front seat. Mam's mouth turns into a thin line when she notices Deilwen's father. He's not at home watching the football on Robin Williams's television; Mam'll be cross with Tada all over again. Deilwen's mother leans across her husband. ‘Your little girl can sit next to Deilwen,' she says. ‘We'll look after her.' Little girl?