The Earth Hums in B Flat (17 page)

‘Sit here, Gwenni,' says Mam. She pulls me forward and pushes me into the seat next to Deilwen. ‘Behave yourself and don't move from there,' she says. Where would I go?

Ned makes the engine grate and screech and Deilwen puts her hands over her ears. As the charabanc starts to move forward I turn and watch Mam stagger down the aisle and sit next to Nanw Lipstick. She sits right on the edge of the seat and sticks her nose into the air, holding on to the cake tin in her lap. I try to see if Alwenna is behind me somewhere but cigarette smoke is writhing around everyone in the back half of the bus and I can't find her. She must be on the charabanc if her mother's here. I turn to face the way we're going again. The fabric on the seat feels rough under my thighs; it used to be soft as the down on a baby bird.

Look at Deilwen's mother and father watching me. Deilwen's mother holds a handkerchief over her nose; it only just covers it. Deilwen smiles at me, then looks out through the window. Her nose is just like her mother's. I hadn't noticed that at Sunday School; it must be their family nose.

Guto'r Wern usually sits in the front seat where Deilwen's parents sit, with whoever is looking after him for the day. I wonder where he is; I didn't see him when I looked round, and I can't hear him. ‘Did you see Guto come on the charabanc at the bottom of your hill?' I ask Deilwen.

‘Oh,' she says, ‘he wanted to sit next to me and I screamed and screamed and Mami said it was a disgrace to let someone like that travel with us and in the end someone took him off and said they'd both go on the train.' She shudders. ‘It was horrible.'

‘My father says there's no harm in him,' I say. ‘He's innocent as a child.'

The charabanc rattles along the road and the road follows the sea. Guto will be following the sea, too, on the train. He likes the sea. The water reflects the grey of the clouds this morning and merges with the sky on the horizon so that you can't see where one ends and the other begins. The sea is slow, the shallow waves too lazy to carry their white frills to the shore. It isn't like this at night, the sea. I could fly far away over this sea. Last night there were more eyes than ever watching from the sea. All the family eyes were there. Would they help me to fly away? Or would they keep me here, too? I can't see any eyes in this placid sea.

‘Guto can fly,' I say to Deilwen. ‘And I can fly in my sleep. I fly right to the edge of the sea.'

‘People can't fly,' says Deilwen. ‘That's going against the laws of God.'

I haven't found anything in Matthew that says animals haven't got spirits, and I haven't read anything that says people can't fly. If it doesn't say people can't, does that mean they can?

‘I don't think it is,' I say. ‘Sometimes I can almost fly when I'm awake. Almost. Guto tried to teach me but it didn't work.' Mam is too far away to hear me. ‘I can remember flying when I was little.'

Deilwen moves nearer the window. I don't want her to be my friend. But I don't know what Mam will say.

I turn around again to see if I can spot Alwenna and there she is in a gap in the smoke, right at the back on the long seat, laughing with Aneurin and Edwin. I need to talk to her before the charabanc reaches Bermo about my plot for rescuing the dead fox and freeing its spirit. There won't be time once we're at the Festival.

The charabanc bumps and sways as Ned fights with the levers and the steering wheel, and the smell of petrol fumes mixes with the cigarette smoke. When I was little, I used to be sick before the charabanc reached Dyffryn.

I get up and begin to walk towards the back of the bus. Alwenna sees me; she waves and then turns her face away from me as if she's made a mistake. As I pass Mam, she grabs hold of my arm. ‘What did I tell you?' she says. ‘Get back to your seat. Don't show me up.' I forgot I had to stay in my seat.

My arm throbs where Mam dug her fingertips into it. I sit back down next to Deilwen. I'll have to rescue the dead fox on my own. I can do that. But the only time I can do it is when we have our lunch in the vestry of Bethania Chapel in Bermo. Then I'll have to hide the fox, but where? Where?

I hear Alwenna laughing at the back of the bus. Her laugh is like her song. It peals like a bell above the noise of the engine and the chatter of the people. Deilwen's mother tightens her lips and turns to Deilwen's father and shakes her head.

Deilwen won't sit still on her seat next to me. She bumps me with her elbow. Mam would tell me off if it was me.

‘Mami, Mami,' she wails. I look at her. Whatever is the matter with her?

Her mother looks at her, too. ‘Stop the bus,' she shouts at Ned, rapping him on the head with her handbag and spoiling his quiff.

The charabanc screeches and squeals. It begins to slow down. But it's too late. Just as the charabanc stops, Deilwen throws up. I watch the vomit sliding down my legs and into the tops of my socks and slithering over my sandals that Tada polished this morning until they shone like conkers. The vomit is warm and smells of porridge. I try not to breathe and close my eyes tight so I don't see it.

‘Get out,' says Ned. ‘You can't stay on my charabanc in that state.'

‘What have you done now, Gwenni?' says Mam's voice from above me.

And Deilwen's mother says, ‘Never mind, your mam can buy you a new pair of socks when we get to Bermo.'

21

We all bundle in through Bethania's vestry doors, the boys at the front and girls behind them. We're starving hungry after singing all morning. My stomach is quite hollow. Young Mr Ellis in his chapel suit is trying to keep us quiet and form us into a tidy line but no one takes any notice of him. His spectacles have slipped down to the tip of his nose and he's carried through the door and down the corridor on a tide of hungry boys as relentless as my night-time sea.

The sun came out while we were in Chapel and this vestry is hot and smells of sandwiches and cake and sweat and dust. But it's lucky it's hot; Mrs Llywelyn Pugh will have to take off her dead fox and leave it somewhere.

Mrs Sergeant Jones and Mrs Jones the Butcher left the Singing Festival early to prepare the food. Mrs Jones the Butcher stands in the doorway to the room where we eat every year. Her arms are folded underneath her huge bosom. The surge of boys stops dead and Young Mr Ellis is catapulted forward. He pushes his spectacles up his nose with his little finger but they slide down again in an instant. I'm too far away to see if his little fingernail is dirty today.

‘Mr Ellis.' Mrs Jones the Butcher has a huge voice, too. ‘Why are you allowing these children to run in?' She spreads her arms out to stop any of us going past. Her bosom drops to her waist and the boys begin to snigger.

Young Mr Ellis looks back at us. His face is red, and shiny with sweat. He pushes his spectacles up his nose again. He ducks under one of her outstretched arms and stands behind her and whispers something into her ear.

‘We'll see about that,' she says, and she looks at us until we fall silent. ‘Boys to that table, girls over there. That way we'll have no trouble,' she says, pushing the boys one after another in the right direction. We girls scuttle to our own table. I look around for Mrs Llywelyn Pugh but I can't see her. She didn't come on the charabanc like everyone else with their food plates and tins and boxes on their laps; she and her dead-mouse sandwiches were to come with Mr Pugh in his car.

The trestle table is laid with a white cloth and its stiff edges scratch my legs as I slide onto the bench.

‘I hope there aren't any splinters in these to ladder my stockings,' says Alwenna as she slithers in next to me. Her new green skirt takes up enough room for two people. I try to squash it down where it billows over my leg but the net underneath it won't flatten. ‘Did your mam have to get you some new socks, then?' she says.

I stick my legs out under the table for her to see. Mam will be cross for a long time about having to spend the new-house money on socks. And I can still smell porridge. I swing my legs back under the bench and try not to think about it.

‘My mam says your mam should have paid for Gwenni's new socks,' says Alwenna to Deilwen at the end of the table. Deilwen takes no notice of her. ‘Airs and graces,' says Alwenna, and she pushes up the tip of her nose. ‘My mam's cousin down south knows her mam's cousin,' she says to me. ‘She's airs and graces too. She went to work in a posh house in London, only as a maid, mind, and when she came home for the weekend six months later she'd forgotten how to speak Welsh. That's more airs and graces than your mam.'

Is Mam airs and graces? Is that what the matter is with her?

‘Grace,' shouts Mrs Twm Edwards and I fold my hands together and bow my head like everyone else and Young Mr Ellis mutters something very quick and then we start on the sandwiches.

There are plates and plates of minced-mouse sandwiches with black crusts; the sight of them makes my stomach lurch and I try to hold my breath in case I breathe in a mouse spirit. There are some plates of egg sandwiches, too; if they're Mrs Edwards the Bank's egg sandwiches they won't make my old family stomach worse.

As I munch, I look around and there is Mrs Llywelyn Pugh sitting at the head of the table where the women are eating their dinner. I can't see her eating any of her minced-mouse sandwiches. But she's not wearing her dead fox. Where has she left it? I can't see it anywhere.

‘What's the matter with you?' says Alwenna. ‘Have you been listening to me?'

I haven't but I don't say so.

‘Elin Evans,' she says. ‘All that stuff about her and Paleface. D'you know about it?'

I don't know what she's talking about.

‘Wake up, Gwenni,' she says. She leans towards me and breathes out the smell of minced mouse into my face. I hold my breath. ‘All that stuff about him beating her. And . . .' She looks around and begins to whisper. ‘Those babies' grave in our cemetery. He killed them. Everyone knows.'

If everyone knows, why is she whispering? Anyway, what babies' grave? Is this the grave Miss Owen Penllech was talking about? Is this a Nanw Lipstick half-a-story?

‘You're hopeless, Gwenni,' says Alwenna. ‘Don't you know anything?'

Mrs Twm Edwards comes over to our table and starts handing out the jellies. The glass dishes clatter on the tray and the red jelly shimmers inside them. If I were a criminal I would steal priceless jewels that looked like that jelly. Mrs Morris follows Mrs Twm Edwards to hand out the fluted spoons she brings with her every year. The silvery surface of the spoons has rubbed away in places and the yellow metal underneath gives the jelly a bitter tang.

How will I find the dead fox? I'm sure it's not in this room. Maybe Mrs Llywelyn Pugh took her sandwich tins into the kitchen and left the dead fox in there. I swallow some jelly, cool and slippery in my throat, and try not to notice the tang. I'll have to search for the fox.

I cross my fingers. ‘I'm going to be sick,' I say to Mrs Twm Edwards.

‘You'd better go and tell your mam,' she says, and backs away. ‘She'll know what to do.'

‘I thought you were being odder than usual,' says Alwenna. ‘Can I have your jelly?'

‘No,' I say, and I slip from the bench and bump my shin on its hard edge.

Alwenna shrugs. ‘You won't want it,' she says and takes the glass dish with the rest of my jelly and begins to eat it.

I rub my shin and limp past the men's table, which has a pall of smoke hanging above it although there are only five of them sitting there. All the rest are at home listening to the Cup Final on the wireless or squeezed into Mrs Robin Williams's parlour to watch it in a world where it's always snowing. Guto isn't here with the men. But I saw him at the Festival, singing and laughing. Did Mrs Beynon say it's a disgrace to let him eat with us, too? Poor Guto.

The women's table is crowded and they're laughing and talking and eating all at the same time the way I'm told off for doing. I hear someone mention Mrs Evans but I don't hear what they say about her. I try to make myself invisible to walk past.

‘Gwenni,' says Mam. ‘Where are you off to?'

‘I feel ill,' I say and rub my stomach.

‘You know where the lavatory is,' says Mam. ‘Make sure you clean up properly afterwards.'

‘That's a bit hard, Magda,' says Nanw Lipstick. ‘Shall I come with you, Gwenni?'

Mam's face turns pink and she presses her lips tight together. ‘Leave her, Nanw,' she says.

I shake my head at Alwenna's mam and run towards the door. I push it shut behind me and stand to listen for a moment to make sure no one is coming. But there's no point because when I reach the kitchen Mrs Thomas next door is already there.

‘Quick, Gwenni,' she says. ‘Help me get these cakes on the plates. There's your mam's big tin. Put her cakes on these three plates.' She pushes the plates towards me. ‘I'll take in these I've done while you're doing that.' She balances the plate holding her special chocolate cake in the crook of her arm and takes another full plate in each hand and goes out through the kitchen door. The draught from her passing swings the door shut behind her and there on the back of it, hanging on a hook with two striped tea towels, is the dead fox. See how its glassy eyes stare straight at me. They beseech me.