The Earth Hums in B Flat (19 page)

‘What do you think I'm doing, you silly girl.' She shrieks at me and I have trouble understanding what she's saying as well as what she's doing. She waves the poker at me and I back towards the door. The smoke swirls around her like a dirty grey dressing gown. There are bits of something sticking to the poker. I look at the fire in the grate and see two eyes staring up at me before one of them rolls into the hearth with a clunk. Mrs Llywelyn Pugh's dead fox.

‘Where's Tada?' I say. Tada will know what to do with Mam. Maybe she's forgotten to take her tablets.

‘Out.' Mam screams at me. ‘Get out, you wicked girl. How dare you do this to me.'

‘Give me the poker,' I say and I try to take hold of the handle from Mam, but she swings it around out of my reach. She begins to laugh and then to cry and cough and then she staggers around on her knees and begins to whack what is left of the dead fox down into the dying flames. Fur and ash fly up from the grate.

‘I was going to give it back,' I say. I can scarcely breathe and I cough as if I've got the croup. I put my handkerchief back over my face.

Mam rocks back on her heels by the fire. ‘Give it back?' She begins to laugh again. ‘Are you completely stupid? How could you possibly give it back?'

‘I was going to take it to Mrs Llywelyn Pugh and apologise,' I say. I wonder why Tada doesn't come.

‘Why?' says Mam, her voice raspy.

‘Because I should have thought about how upset she'd be when I took it,' I say.

‘Did you think about how upset I would be?' says Mam. ‘No, I didn't think you would.' She begins to cry again in great gulps. She rubs her eyes with the sleeve of her blue jumper. ‘I didn't bring you up to lie and steal. Where do you get it from?' She rocks back and forth in front of the flames. What if she rocks right over into them?

‘I just wanted to save the fox's spirit,' I say.

Mam screams until the smoke shakes hazily in the air above her. Her mouth is wide open and her head thrown back. She looks like a vixen might when it howls into the night. Then she retches as if she's going to be sick.

Where is Tada? And where is Bethan?

‘Where's Bethan?' I say. ‘Shall I get Bethan for you?'

‘Bethan found this in my cake tin under your bed. In my cake tin.' Mam puts her head back again but when she tries to scream the breath rattles in her throat.

I say, ‘I think it's all burnt now.'

Mam looks at the fire and the fur smouldering in the grate and in little heaps on the hearth tiles. The fire has died down and the smoke thinned. Flares of soot left by the flames shoot along the tiles of the grate to the mantelpiece and up the chimney breast to the high shelf. The Toby jugs have their eyes closed. They've probably never seen such smoke and so much of it coming out of the grate beneath them. Mam pokes the burnt fur and the stench pours from it again.

‘What am I going to say to Mrs Llywelyn Pugh?' I say from behind my handkerchief.

Mam turns round. ‘You don't have to say anything to Mrs Llywelyn Pugh,' she says, nodding the poker at me.

I step back. I don't want bits of the fox's fur to fly off and touch me.

‘Mrs Evans told me such a sad story—' I say.

‘Mrs Evans, Mrs Evans,' Mam says. ‘You're as bad as your father with his Elin this and his Elin that. Anybody'd think the woman was a saint. She was the worst wife Ifan could have possibly had with her prim and prissy ways and her nose in the air.' Mam wallops the fire with the poker. A great puff of smoke and ash and fur billows into the air. ‘That's what I'd like to do to her,' she says. ‘She's a thief, if you like. Is that where you learnt to steal? Is it?'

What is it that Mrs Evans has stolen?

‘But it was Mrs Evans who made me see—' I say.

Mam roars like the MGM lion.

I wonder if I ought to give Mam one of her tablets. I move to fetch them from the scullery but Mam lunges at me from where she's on her knees in front of the grate and catches my mackintosh with one hand and waves the poker at me with the other.

‘Don't think you're getting away with this,' she says. She pants as she pulls herself to her feet. I stagger with her weight. Some of her yellow curls are singed at the tips and the two streams of lipstick make her look as if she's been eating some of the raw meat she gives to John Morris. Sparks from the fire have made a pattern of black holes down the front of her blue jumper. It's one of her favourite jumpers. She'll be cross about that. She lets go of my mackintosh and swivels round and pokes at the fire again.

‘Nearly gone now,' she says. ‘It'll soon be ashes. No one will know.'

I don't mention that Mrs Evans has guessed that I took the dead fox and will be expecting to see Mrs Llywelyn Pugh wearing it again in the winter.

Mam looks at me. ‘Don't you go telling anybody about this,' she says. ‘Does that Alwenna know you took it?'

I cross my fingers and shake my head.

‘Everyone will think it's the Bermo bad boys,' says Mam. She gives the fire another flick with the poker. She takes a deep, shuddery breath, then coughs. ‘It'll be all right. So long as no one knows, it'll be all right. So don't you go telling anyone it was you, Gwenni.' She glares at me. ‘Promise. Cross your heart and hope to die. Go on.'

I can't promise, not even with my fingers crossed. I back towards the door so that I can run out and Mam follows me, waving the poker.

There's a crash as the front door opens and I move out of the way just in time for Tada to rush through into the living room. He stops still. He looks at Mam. She looks like the Guy Fawkes they put on the town bonfire. ‘Magda?' he says. ‘What's happened? Have we got a chimney fire?'

‘Ask her,' says Mam, waving the poker at me.

Tada tries to take the poker. Mam won't let go of it; it's as if the heat from the fire has fused it to her hand. Mam begins to cry, and then cough. Tada helps her to her chair and lowers her into it. She drops the poker and covers her face with her pink cushion.

‘Well?' Tada says to me.

‘I took Mrs Llywelyn Pugh's dead fox,' I say. ‘Not the Bermo bad boys.'

‘It didn't sound the sort of thing any bad boys would want to steal,' says Tada.

‘And I hid it inside Mam's big cake tin and put it under the bed. I was going to bury it and save its spirit.'

‘Well,' says Tada. His mouth twitches and he looks back at Mam. She rocks back and forth in her chair like Mrs Evans did when she'd been to the dentist. Except Mam doesn't make any sound at all.

‘Only I talked to Mrs Evans and I was going to give it back and say sorry. But Bethan found it and told Mam and Mam . . .' I point at the grate and its smouldering remains.

Tada bends down and begins to sweep up some of the fur with the hearth-brush. The fox's glass eyes clink on the tiles as he sweeps. He stands straight again, the brush dangling in his hand, and looks around the room. The smoke hangs in slow swathes under the ceiling and ash covers everything. Mam rocks and rocks.

‘I don't know where to start,' he says.

Mam stops rocking and lowers her cushion. ‘Aren't you going to tell her off?' she says. ‘Am I the only one who can see how wicked she is?'

‘Hush, Magda. Hush,' says Tada. ‘You sit quietly there. I'll make you a cup of tea as soon as I can clear the grate.'

‘Tea?' says Mam. Her voice rises. ‘Tea? You stand there and listen to her telling you these stupid things and all you can think about is making a cup of tea?'

Tada puts the hearth-brush down and tries to catch hold of Mam's hand. She swats him away.

‘People think she's odd enough already,' she says. ‘You have to do something about it. What if she ends up like her grandmother?' She mewls and covers her mouth with her cushion.

‘Hush, hush,' says Tada. ‘Gwenni, you go upstairs to read for a bit. I'll bring you a cup of tea once I get the fire sorted.'

I back out of the room and follow the ribbons of smoke up the stairs. It's going to take days and days to clean everything. Down in the living room Tada tries to soothe Mam. When I walk into my bedroom Mari the Doll looks up at me and I say to her, ‘What could be so bad about ending up like Nain?'

24

The black taxi becomes smaller and smaller, then disappears into the mist on the road winding up to Brwyn Coch. Angharad and Catrin were snatched so quickly away from me by their aunty it feels as if they've been kidnapped. Maybe I've slipped into one of the stories in Aunty Lol's detective books.

I rummage about in my mackintosh pocket and find one Black Jack. The paper has stuck to it but I lick it off and spit it out. Black Jacks are my favourite sweets in the whole world. Alwenna won't eat them because they make her teeth look grimy. You can't have grimy teeth if you want boys to like you. If you can suck a Black Jack without chewing, it will last a long, long time.

Maybe Mrs Evans was just worn out after the inquest. She didn't look at me. She just sat in the back of the taxi with her hand over her eyes. Tada says inquests are not very nice things; not at all like I read about in Aunty Lol's books.

Catrin was crying for me when her aunty pulled her into the taxi. I hadn't seen her for nearly a week; Mam won't let me go to Brwyn Coch any more. But Tada said: I'm putting my foot down. And told me he'd arranged for me to have time off school today to look after Angharad and Catrin so that Mrs Evans could attend the inquest. I took them to Nain's house because our house is still a bit smoky even though Nain's been cleaning it all week. Mam's new tablets from Dr Edwards made her too sleepy to help. Nain gave us Heinz spaghetti on buttery toast and chocolate cake, and Angharad and Catrin were happy.

I lean on the railings of the Baptism Pool. The water is low in the Pool, as if the rain never falls here, and smells of decay. I don't look too closely at it. It seems long ago since I saw the spirit in the water when I was flying. Was it a premonition? Maybe I really can foretell the future, like Nain with her tea leaves. Perhaps that has been passed on to me with her name. A trickle of gory water runs from a pipe halfway down the concrete side of the Pool. Is it rust that makes it that colour, or is it blood? I try not to think where it might be coming from and move away.

My mackintosh is covered in flakes of paint and rust marks where it rubbed against the railings. I try to brush them off but they stick as if they've been glued on. Mam will be cross with me. Suddenly I am so tired that I slide down to lie in the grass. Mist swirls above me. I hear the sheep call to their lambs, though the lambs will be almost as big as their mothers by now. Nearby, a bee drones ceaselessly between the red campion stems on the bank. ‘Poor thing,' I say to it as my eyes close, ‘you won't find much there.' And I drift away into sleep.

A squeak jerks me awake. What is it? Then I hear another squeak. I lift my head and see Sergeant Jones wheel his bicycle out of the mist. His face is red and his white shirt has wet patches spreading from under his arms. He's slung his jacket over the bicycle's crossbar and his helmet dangles by its strap from the handlebars. I jump up from the grass.

‘You startled me, Gwenni,' says Sergeant Jones. His breath wheezes from his lungs. ‘Oof, it's close today.' Waves of sweaty heat roll from him over me. I try not to breathe. ‘What are you doing here?'

‘I was walking up with Angharad and Catrin when Ned Hughes's black taxi came by with Mrs Evans and Miss Cadwalader and they took the girls into the taxi,' I say.

‘Was Mrs Evans all right?' Sergeant Jones pulls one of his big white handkerchiefs from his trouser pocket and mops his face. But his face is just as shiny when he pushes the handkerchief back into his pocket.

‘I think she was tired,' I say. ‘I only spoke to Miss Cadwalader. Tada says inquests are horrible things.'

‘I'm on my way up there,' says Sergeant Jones, ‘just to make sure everything's all right.'

‘Tada says she'll be better after the inquest. She'll be able to bury Mr Evans now.' He can lie in our cemetery with his dead babies. Will all his secrets be on his gravestone for everyone to read?

Sergeant Jones props his bicycle against the railings of the Baptism Pool and pulls his handkerchief out again to mop his face. ‘This close weather doesn't agree with me,' he says. He looks at me. ‘And how's your mam?' he says. ‘I expect she's upset by this business, all this talk of inquests.'

‘Dr Edwards gave her some new tablets,' I say. I don't mention that it's the dead fox that upset her.

‘Well, I hope she's better soon. Tell her Martha missed her on Monday morning,' he says. ‘She hates doing those brasses on her own.' He mops his face again and pushes the handkerchief back into his pocket. ‘So, did your father tell you anything else?'

‘No,' I say. ‘Tell me what? Is there something else to tell? People don't tell me things because they think I'm a child.'

‘You are a child, Gwenni. People don't tell children things they think will frighten them, for instance.'