The Earth Hums in B Flat (33 page)

See, whether I'm dreaming or not, my feet are determined to take me this way. But they're not taking me to look into the Baptism Pool today. I can smell the Pool from the road. Maybe the stench is from all the sins that have been washed away in the water. I hadn't thought of that. It must be nice to have all the bad things you've ever done simply washed away. But where does all the water go that's full of sins?

Did the water in the Reservoir wash away all Ifan Evans's sins? Have we been drinking them? My stomach lurches as well as rumbling. The big wall between the road and the Reservoir hides the water from sight and I can pretend it's not there. But my feet hurry me past all the same.

Mrs Williams is standing outside Penrhiw, leaning on her gate and looking up the road. Her head has sunk down into her shoulders since I saw her at Ifan Evans's funeral. She looks like a little gnome in a fairy story. I scuffle my feet to make a noise and she turns towards me.

‘What a lonely old road this is now, Gwenni,' she says. ‘A lonely old road. Where are you off to? Are you going to Brwyn Coch?'

Is that where my feet are taking me? I make an I-don't-know shrug at Mrs Williams.

‘It's like the grave, that house, Gwenni. Like the grave. I don't know who Twm Edwards will ever get to live there again. I don't know what's happening to this town. We'll never be the same again, any of us, that's for sure. Your nain was saying the exact same thing to me the other day. She said: It's as if something's come along and turned us all upside down and given us a good shake before setting us on our feet again, Bessie. But you're young, Gwenni. You'll get over it.' Mrs Williams snuffles and puts her arms around me and clutches me to her large bosom. Her bosom is soft as a cloud with a powdery smell that makes me sneeze. ‘Listen to me being an old misery.' She pushes me away. ‘Off you go,' she says. ‘Do what you have to do, Gwenni. But don't dwell on things. It's not good for you. Now, don't stay up there too long. There's more rain coming from the looks of that sky, if not something worse.' She gives me another little push to send me on my way.

My feet have brought me to the field gate for Brwyn Coch. In my head I'm not sure that this is where I want to be. Will Brwyn Coch be like the grave? I pick some of the spiky cornflowers growing in the grass at the foot of each gatepost, though I don't know who the flowers are for.

I push through the gate and latch it behind me. The sheep gather in groups to huddle in the shelter of the stone wall. They jostle and push until they're squeezed together. Do they sense the coming rain? Maybe there is worse coming. I linger for a moment and watch the sky and the sea merge on the horizon into streamers of grey-green and violet. My feet quicken their pace, across the field and over the stone stile, but they slow again as I approach Brwyn Coch so that they're barely moving when I reach the cottage.

I peer through the front window into the parlour. The panes are clear and cold as ice under my palm. But it's dark inside and difficult to see anything. And what would there be to see? No shelves sagging with books, no fire flickering in the inglenook, no desk balancing towers of exercise books on its polished surface. I try the kitchen front window. I can see the gleam of the tap above the sink under the back window, but that's all. It is silent here; but not like the grave. The graves and the tombs in the cemetery tell me the stories of the people who lie in them, even if it's only to tell me a short, short tale like that of Gwion and Nia. This is just an empty house, not a grave I can read or talk to. It may as well be the crumbled heap of stones and slate I saw in my premonition. There's nothing left here of Mrs Evans and Angharad and Catrin. I have the only thing left; the blotter rocker in my pocket. I take it with me everywhere.

My stomach begins to hurt. I sit down on the front step and pull my knees into my stomach to ease the pain. Somewhere across the bay in the violet evening are Angharad and Catrin. But not Mrs Evans. She's a prisoner in Chester; that's all the way to England. An innocent prisoner. Who knows her secret? I do, and I think Sergeant Jones has guessed. Angharad knows, but does she understand? And did Mrs Evans tell her sister? Miss Cadwalader is stern with Angharad and Catrin. What will they do without their mother? Everyone says that Mrs Evans will go to jail for the rest of her life. Is that true? Everyone except Tada and Sergeant Jones says she deserves it. I look at the flowers in my hand; there's no reason to leave them here. I keep Mrs Evans and Angharad and Catrin in my heart, the way Mrs Evans asked me to. I'll write their story into
Catrin in the Clouds
, and maybe one day, a long, long time in the future, I'll give it to Catrin so that she'll understand. Maybe.

Another spasm shoots through my stomach and I pull my knees tight to it again and wait for the pain to pass. This is how I flew when I was young, this is the way I showed Angharad and Catrin, and poor Guto when he was trying to show me how he flew. Why won't it work?

My mind tells me I should go now. Leave Brwyn Coch and never come here again. My stomach pain has eased but when I stand up the inside of my head becomes a merry-go-round of movement and colour. I grab the doorpost and stand up still and straight and shake my head hard to clear the sensation.

I look straight down over the field to the bay. It's impossible to see where the water ends and Ll
n begins. Wraiths of mist curl low over the field. Tada says they rise from water; from bogs and streams, rivers and lakes, even from wet fields. Have these wraiths risen from the stream or from the Reservoir? Some of them float up towards the house, though there's no breeze to push them along. The biggest is shaped like a man. What if it's Ifan Evans's spirit risen from the Reservoir? Before my head can decide anything, my feet begin to run, faster than they've ever run before, across the field, over the stile, through the gate, past Penrhiw, past the Reservoir hiding behind the wall, past the Baptism Pool full of sins, down the hill, along the high street, and they don't stop until I'm standing on my own front doorstep, still holding the bunch of cornflowers. I sink down to sit on the cold slate of the step and dig my knees into my stomach to stop it hurting so much.

43

Bethan cried herself to sleep tonight. I leave her hiccupping and snoring as I rise up, up, up into the sky where the air is as soft to rest upon as Mrs Williams Penrhiw's powdery bosom. Up here, far away from everybody, the night is peaceful; there's no sound except the hum of the Earth. At school, when I sang the note to Mr Hughes Music he said it was B flat but he laughed when I said it was the note the Earth hummed. He said: You'll be hearing the music of the spheres next, Gwenni. But he doesn't know how the Earth's deep, never-ending note clothes me in rainbow colours, fills my head with all the books ever written, and feeds me with the smell of Mrs Sergeant Jones's famous vanilla biscuits and the strawberry taste of Instant Whip and the cool slipperiness of glowing red jelly. I could stay up here for ever without the need for anything else in the whole world.

I drift above the town. Now and then the clouds part to let moonbeams glance and glint on the roofs below. Almost all the house lights are out. I don't want to spend time above the town tonight, or fly up into the hills towards Brwyn Coch so I turn and swoop down to the castle, then up and over the Red Dragon waiting in its green and white cage, and out towards the sea. If I could fly across this sea, I could fly for ever. But the watchers see me; the eyes of millions, billions, trillions of shrimps, crabs, fishes, whales, mermaids, monsters are watching, watching to see if I dare to fly away. Tonight the smell of the sea is strong; a stench of fish and seaweed seems to rush towards me. Is this another premonition? Or maybe I'm too close.

My belly cramps with fear and I begin to plummet towards the water. First my feet, then my legs, touch the cold spray and I land half on top of Bethan and the bed is soaked. I scream and scream. Mam bangs on the wall and shouts, ‘Be quiet, Gwenni, I need my beauty sleep.'

Then Bethan snorts and wakes and begins to shout, too. ‘Mam, Mam, Gwenni's wet the bed.' She heaves herself out of it. ‘You're disgusting, you stupid baby,' she says to me.

I'm lying here, cold and wet, as Mam comes through the door and switches on the light. It's so bright after the dark of the sky that I can't open my eyes. I can still smell the fish from the sea; perhaps I've brought some back with me, caught in my nightdress.

‘Bethan, my own Bethan, your old things have started,' says Mam. ‘I'll get you one of my cloths to put on. I'll have to buy you some proper pads tomorrow.'

‘At last,' says Bethan. ‘But I didn't think there'd be so much blood.'

I open my eyes into slits. There's blood everywhere. All over Bethan, all over me and all over the bed. I can feel it begin to dry and crimp on my arms. I try not to think about it.

‘It just looks a lot because Gwenni's been tossing and turning in it,' says Mam. ‘But we'll soon change that old sheet. Gwenni, get out of there.'

‘What is it?' I say. ‘What is it, Mam? Is it the fish?'

‘Don't be silly, Gwenni,' says Mam. ‘It's Bethan's old things started.'

‘My period,' says Bethan. She begins to jig about. ‘I've started, I've started,' she sings.

‘I gave you that pamphlet about it, Gwenni,' says Mam. A long time ago she gave me a pamphlet from
Woman's Weekly
. I thought it was about eggs; I'm sure it didn't say anything about blood.

‘Come on, Gwenni,' says Mam. ‘I want to get back to my bed. You and Bethan take off those nightdresses, and you strip that sheet off. I'll have to put those in to soak in some salt right away or that blood will never come off.' She stops for a second, staring at something we can't see. ‘It'll never come off,' she says. ‘Never. Never.' She covers her mouth with her hands, then gives her head a little shake; she pulls her blue satin sash tight, tight around her dressing gown and goes out.

Bethan takes off her nightdress and rubs her arms and legs with it. I turn my back to Buddy Holly and try to take my nightdress off without it touching my face. Bethan's blood is all over it. I can still smell fish so I narrow my eyes and look all along the bed in case I've brought something back with me from the sea. Bethan rolls up her nightdress and throws it on the chair, right on top of Mari the Doll. I hold mine in front of me and try to rub the blood off my arms with its sleeves. Now, as well as the belly cramps I got because I was frightened, I've got that old family stomach. I try not to think about so much blood; I try not to think about the fox with the bleeding wound; I try not to think about the sticky floor at Brwyn Coch; I try not to think about Mrs Llywelyn Pugh and her blood running like a river under the bathroom door.

‘Here, Bethan,' Mam says as she comes through the door. Her hands shake as she gives Bethan a long piece of old towel and a pair of baggy knickers. ‘You'll have to wear these for now. I'll get you a proper belt as well as the pads tomorrow.' Mam pushes Bethan's blood-stained nightdress and Mari the Doll off the chair and puts a fresh sheet and clean nightdresses on the seat. She wraps her arms around her middle and looks at us. ‘You'll need a wet flannel, Gwenni,' she says. ‘You can't get into a clean nightdress and a clean bed in that state. I suppose I'll have to get it for you.'

I stand shivering while Mam goes down to the scullery for the flannel. Bethan is trying to get the cloth folded into the knickers. ‘Just wait until I tell Caroline,' she says. ‘She thought she was starting last week, but she never did.'

I never, ever want to have periods.

John Morris is scrabbling at the back door but Mam shouts at him to go away. He starts yowling instead. Perhaps he can smell the fish, too. Nellie Davies will be opening her window to see what the noise is about in a minute.

The flannel, when Mam brings it up, is as cold as the seaspray. I rub hard to get the blood off where it's dried on my arms, and I dab and dab at my legs until the grey flannel turns bright red.

Bethan has stopped struggling with the knickers and is watching me. ‘Mam, it isn't me,' she says. ‘It's her. Look.'

She and Mam look at me. I try to cover myself with the flannel. I can feel something warm trickling down the inside of my left thigh, all the way down to my ankle and to the linoleum beneath my feet. I look down. It's blood.

‘It's not fair,' says Bethan. ‘Why are all the unfair things happening to me?'