The Earth Hums in B Flat (27 page)

‘Bit like me, then,' says Nain. She waves the toasting fork at me. ‘D'you want to make yourself some breakfast?'

‘Please, Nain,' I say. ‘I couldn't get to the larder because Tada's decided to distemper the scullery. In blue. To cheer Mam up.' Will the mouths be drowned by the paint before they shout out all our secrets?

‘I think it'll take more than that to cheer her up after her turn last night, don't you?' says Nain. ‘She's in bed, is she?'

I nod and push a thick slice of Nain's soft white bread onto the toasting fork. Nain pokes at the fire and clears a glowing cave for me to put the bread to toast. The phoenix on top of the poker dances in the firelight. Nain's brasses are always polished. Our phoenix doesn't dance at all since Mam used the poker to burn the dead fox. And Mrs Evans's phoenix has flown away for ever. I don't want to think about Mrs Evans yet.

‘How's Lloyd George?' I say. He's sitting on his swing with his head on one side looking at himself in his mirror.

‘He still hasn't said a thing since he came back,' Nain says. ‘Lol's worried, but he seems all right to me. I quite like him quiet.'

‘Maybe he had a bad scare when old Dafydd Owen opened his window and started yelling,' I say.

‘He probably did,' says Nain. ‘But at least it sent him straight back to his cage. And what was your mother shouting about? She was making more noise than old Dafydd. I could hear her from the top of the hill.'

‘Nothing,' I say and yank the toast back from the fire as smoke spirals from it. But it's only burnt on one edge. I turn it over on the fork and hold it in the fiery cavern again.

‘Hmm,' says Nain. ‘I'll get the butter for you.'

She brings it from her larder under the stairs. ‘Nothing like slate for keeping things cold,' she says. ‘And nothing like hot toast with a slab of cold butter on it. You can toast me a slice when you've eaten yours, Gwenni.'

The toast is crunchy at the edges and hot, and the butter is yellow and salty and so cold I can see the marks my teeth make in it although it's melting by the time I'm on the last two bites and drips down my chin. I wipe my chin with my handkerchief and put a slice of bread on the fork to toast for Nain.

Nain takes her smoothing iron from the ironing board and puts it back in its holder on the range. ‘I'll put this back in the fire for a bit when you've finished toasting,' she says. ‘Lol's fire service jacket needs a bit of a press before tomorrow evening. I said I'd do it today for her. No time tomorrow with all the washing to do.'

‘Where is Aunty Lol?' I say.

‘Big football club meeting this morning,' Nain says. ‘And that great horse of a girl is secretary, treasurer and goodness knows what else all rolled into one and has to be there.'

‘Tada says she's a good footballer,' I say.

‘It's not a woman's place though, is it, Gwenni, a football field?' says Nain.

What is a woman's place? What is my place? I turn Nain's toast on the fork. ‘Is prison a woman's place, Nain?' I ask.

‘I wondered when we'd get round to that,' says Nain. ‘I can't tell you any more than I told you last night.'

‘She didn't do it,' I say. ‘Tada says he can't believe it either.'

‘None of us can believe it, Gwenni,' says Nain. ‘But that doesn't mean to say it isn't true. Is that smoke coming from my toast?'

I pull the toast off the fork and she takes it from me with one hand and pushes the iron in its holder onto the fire with the other hand. Then she puts a thinner slice of butter on her toast than she put on mine and sits in her rocking chair to eat it.

‘What will happen to her?' I say.

Nain shrugs. ‘I don't know, Gwenni,' she says. ‘Nothing like this has ever happened around here before. And at least they've let Guto go.'

‘Where to?' I say. ‘Is he back at the Wern?'

‘Dinbych,' she says. ‘They've sent him to Dinbych.'

‘What?' I say. ‘To the asylum?'

‘They'll know how to look after him there,' she says.

‘How can they know?' I say. ‘He won't be able to fly in there, will he? Will they let him outside so he can fly? I thought the asylum was for people who're ill. Guto isn't ill. And he can almost look after himself properly. What will they do to him?'

‘Hush, Gwenni,' says Nain. ‘I'm sure he's in the best place, poor boy. They're bound to have gardens he can walk round there. And he'll have all his meals. It's for the best.'

But is it for Guto's best? What if he can never fly again all the way down from the Wern to the town with his coat flapping like an old crow's wings?

‘And now the detectives have made another mistake with Mrs Evans,' I say. ‘I just know she didn't do it.' But how do I know that? ‘And I'm going to solve the mystery and find the real murderer. They won't send Mrs Evans to Dinbych when they let her go, will they, Nain?'

Nain wipes the butter and crumbs from her fingers and puts her handkerchief back in her apron pocket. She shakes her head. ‘Leave it alone, Gwenni,' she says. ‘Now, talking of mysteries, Lol left another of her books for you to take. She finished it last night. It's under her cushion, that one with the birds on it.'

I shift in the armchair and pull a book out from beneath the bird cushion behind me.
The Beckoning Lady.
I open it to shake any Marie biscuit crumbs into the grate, although I never get them all out when I do that.

‘The crumbs that great girl drops in her books,' says Nain. ‘We could open a biscuit factory with them.'

It's true, we could. I look at what the cover says about the book. It's got Mr Campion and Amanda and Charlie Luke and Lugg in it. And murders. I'm not sure any more that murders in books are like real murders. But I want to be a detective like Mr Campion who always solves the mystery and catches the murderer, not like the detectives from Dolgellau who always get it wrong or like Sergeant Jones who worries more about his garden than about detecting.

Nain wraps a thick cloth around her hand and takes the smoothing iron from its holder. She spits on it and the spit hisses, then she shakes out her damp cloth to put over Aunty Lol's jacket and begins to press it. Steam writhes above the ironing board and a smell of damp wool snakes about the room as if Nain has lambs drying out by the fire the way Mrs Evans did at Brwyn Coch early in the spring. Don't think about Mrs Evans.

Nain hums as she presses. Her humming always makes me sleepy. I hug
The Beckoning Lady
. I won't start reading it until I've finished Matthew; I'm almost at the end. It's taking me a long time to read all my New Testament. But I did stop for a bit to read
The Maltese Falcon
instead. I still haven't found anything useful about animal spirits or flying. But Matthew tells some good stories. There aren't many women in them but there's one near the end called Magdalen, like Mam.

I jump when Nain puts the iron down in the grate. ‘There,' she says. ‘Isn't that smart?' She holds Aunty Lol's jacket by the shoulders to show me and then slips it onto a hanger and stands on a chair to hang it on the clothes pulley above the fire. ‘It'll finish airing there.' The jacket moves in the hot air from the fire, its bright buttons glinting like stars against the sky-black fabric. Nain folds her cloth and collapses the ironing board and takes them both into the scullery.

‘Let's have a cup of tea,' she says. I hear her run water into the kettle, and as she comes back from the scullery with it there's a frantic knocking at the front door.

‘What on earth?' says Nain and hands me the kettle to put on the fire. When she opens the door Nellie Davies from next door stumbles into the house.

‘Gwen, Gwen,' she says, clutching at Nain. ‘Terrible news. Terrible news.'

‘Now, Nellie, sit down,' says Nain and lowers Nellie Davies into her rocking chair that no one else is allowed to sit in. ‘Gwenni, make a pot of tea as soon as that kettle boils.'

Nellie Davies leans back in the chair and her eyes stare at Nain as if they're going to pop from her head and she won't let go of Nain's hand.

‘I didn't realise you knew Elin Evans so well,' says Nain, patting her free hand on Nellie Davies's knee.

‘Not Elin. Not Elin,' says Nellie Davies.

‘Not Elin?' says Nain.

‘Not Elin.' Nellie Davies shudders until her whole body ripples. ‘Ceridwen Llywelyn Pugh. The poor woman. It's all been too much for her. How shall I manage without her, Gwen?'

‘What do you mean, Nellie?' says Nain. She points at the kettle and the teapot for me.

I nod, but I can't make the kettle boil any faster, can I? I put three scoops of tea into the pot and lay out three cups on three saucers. Should I use the best cups and saucers with the green pattern on them?

‘Dead,' says Nellie Davies. ‘Her heart broken once too often. The poor, dear woman.'

Because I stole her dead fox?

‘Because of Elin?' says Nain and then answers herself. ‘Of course, Mrs Llywelyn Pugh knew her parents, didn't she? I didn't realise they were close though . . .'

Nellie Davies nods, still holding Nain's hand. ‘They were close,' she says. ‘She's been good to Elin. And she's been so good to me because of Bob being shot when he was trying to save her son. And both buried next to one another and so far away. And your Idwal. So far away, Gwen.' Nellie Davies sobs. ‘What use was a medal when I had mouths to feed? I don't know what I'd have done without Ceridwen.'

The kettle belches steam and I pour water from it into the teapot and stir it. Three times each way.

‘Oh, Gwen, I heard the birds knocking. I knew they were coming for someone. Knocking and knocking. And last night, did you hear that corpse bird in Bron-y-graig? I put my head under the pillow but that didn't stop death from coming, did it? Poor, dear Ceridwen.' Nellie Davies takes her handkerchief from her apron pocket and wipes her face.

‘And poor Hywel Pugh,' says Nain. ‘He won't know what to do without her, either. Was it her heart, Nellie?'

‘He's beside himself,' says Nellie Davies. ‘He found her this morning. Too late to do anything. He ran through the street to the Police House, covered in her blood.'

‘Her blood?' says Nain. She turns to me. ‘Go home to see how your father's getting on, Gwenni. Leave the tea.' I go through into the scullery and open the back door slowly, slowly.

‘She cut her wrists, Gwen,' says Nellie Davies. ‘Her blood had run like a river under the bathroom door.'

And as I pull hard on the back door to shut it I hear Nellie Davies wail again and again.

PART THREE

35

The cold heightens the scent of the beeswax polish on the pews. Mrs Davies Chapel House never fires the boiler in summer no matter how cold the weather. Through the narrow windows, light spills into the chill dimness of the Chapel. Here, under the gallery, I sit squashed between Alwenna and Meinir and watch the dust motes move up and down the beams of light. When I was little I thought they were angels dancing down from Heaven but Mam said: Don't be silly, Gwenni.

Alwenna pokes her elbow in my side. ‘Your mam not here today, then?' she says. ‘Or your Bethan?'

‘No,' I say. Mam is still in bed and Tada still distempering between trips upstairs to see if Mam needs him. But she doesn't. She lies there staring at the wall and won't speak to him. He said he won't tell her about Mrs Llywelyn Pugh until she feels better. And Bethan didn't come home for lunch, which is lucky since there wasn't any. My stomach rumbles. It's hours since I had toast at Nain's.

Alwenna elbows me again. ‘Why not?' she says.

‘Mam's ill,' I say.

Alwenna smirks. She thinks she knows everything. But to know isn't to understand, is it?

On the other side of me Meinir is speaking to Eirlys and except for shuffling to make room on the seat and squeezing us all tighter together they both ignore Deilwen when she slips through the pew door. No one likes to sit too near her since she was sick on my socks. She bends her head to say a prayer after she sits down. Geraint turns around and nods at her from the pew in front but Aneurin and Edwin are too busy bobbing their quiffs at one another to notice her.

Young Mr Ellis strides up the aisle and into the pew in front of the boys and turns himself around on his seat to face us. Aneurin and Edwin groan and mutter but Young Mr Ellis ignores them.

‘I'm having no nonsense today,' he says. ‘No chattering. No speaking unless you're answering a question.' He pushes his spectacles up his nose. His little fingernail is still black. ‘No—' Alwenna interrupts him. ‘What if we want to ask a question, Mr Ellis?'

‘If you want to ask a question, you put your hand up,' he says.

‘Like at school?' says Geraint without putting his hand up. Young Mr Ellis stares at him.

‘Sorry,' says Geraint.