The Earth Hums in B Flat (37 page)

I fetch a blanket from our bed. Nain tries to take the pink cushion from Mam, but she's clutching it too tightly even in her sleep, so Nain lays the blanket over Mam and the cushion, and tucks the frayed edges in around Mam's legs.

‘I'll just pop home for a minute in case Lol's back. Just so she knows what's happening,' says Nain. ‘Your mam will sleep now, so don't worry.'

Don't worry?

‘What about the ambulance?' says Bethan.

‘I'll be back before that comes,' says Nain.

‘I don't mean that. I mean where's it taking her?' says Bethan.

‘Ah, well . . .' says Nain.

‘Dinbych,' I say. ‘The asylum. Like Nain Eluned.'

‘The bloody madhouse,' says Bethan.

‘Bethan,' says Nain. ‘They don't call it that. It's a hospital now. A special hospital for . . . well, for . . .'

‘Nutcases,' says Bethan. ‘Like Guto'r Wern and Mam. D'you think they'll recognise each other? Mam'll have a fit.'

‘They'll mend your mam, you'll see,' says Nain. ‘They've got all sorts of treatments nowadays. Mend anybody. She'll be home in no time.'

‘Huh,' says Bethan, slumping into Tada's chair.

‘I won't be long,' says Nain. ‘Fetch me if you need me.'

As she walks out through the door, John Morris sneaks back in. He stands and looks from Mam to Bethan, from Bethan to Mam, then jumps onto Mam's lap and treads round and round on the blanket before he curls up on it and closes his eyes.

It must be nice to be a cat, coming and going as you please. Some people in faraway countries believe that instead of going to Heaven when you die, you're born again. You could be a boy or a girl, a worm or a bird, a horse or a sheep. I'd like to come back as a cat. Maybe once I was a cat and came back as a girl. Or a fox, maybe I was a fox and that's the part of me Aneurin sees. Or perhaps I was a bird, soaring up into the sky, floating on the thermals; that would explain why I can fly. But doesn't that prove that animals have spirits just like humans? Spirits that they pass along from life to life.

In her sleep Mam gives a shuddering sigh. John Morris opens one eye and purrs and closes it again. The blanket will be covered in his cat hairs. That will probably make it thicker and warmer, which is lucky because it's an old blanket from the jumble sale and has worn too thin to be warm in winter. Mam insisted it was brand new from a shop in Llandudno. Maybe when you have something loose in your brain you can't tell the difference between truth and lies.

Bethan is chewing her fingernails again. She and Caroline had a competition to see who could grow her fingernails first and Bethan won. But her nails will be all gone again now; I can see from here that both her thumbnails are bleeding.

Where will Caroline and Richard go? Poor Richard. Maybe we will become pen-pals. Monsieur Jenkins made a special announcement in assembly that he wanted lots of us to become pen-pals with children in a school in France. But we had to write in English and be written to in French. He said no one in France wanted letters in Welsh. Richard won't want letters in Welsh.

Bethan will miss Caroline more than I will miss Richard. Will Janet Jones the Butcher want to be best friends with her again? She's leaning against the cushions on Tada's chair and her thumb has crept into her mouth. I fold my arms on the table and lay my head on them. If I fall asleep maybe I can leave all this behind and fly into my night sky.

A bright blue light and a loud noise pulsing through the window startle me awake. Mam stirs and mumbles. John Morris slides off her lap without waking, taking the blanket with him and landing in a heap on the linoleum. Mam clutches her pink cushion. Even in her sleep she looks frightened at the commotion. I get up from the table and go over to her and stroke her hands as they grip the cushion. ‘You'll soon be back home, Mam,' I say. ‘Don't worry. I won't leave you. I'll look after you until you've mended.' Then I turn round and shake Bethan by the shoulder. ‘Wake up,' I say. ‘The ambulance has come.'

48

The ambulance has gone quietly into the night, and Mam with it, still asleep, a smile on her face. Will she know where she is when she wakes?

Dr Edwards said he would take Tada in his car after the ambulance, so he could see Mam settled in. Nain gathered some clothes together for her and said that she would look after Bethan and me until Dr Edwards brought Tada back home. So Tada has gone, too. Will Mam care that he's there?

Was Alwenna right? Was it Ifan Evans's death that pushed Mam into being ill? Was he Bethan's father? Look at the clues. Bethan has the same colour eyes as Ifan Evans. He was Mam's boyfriend for a while before she met Tada, and maybe afterwards – remember the swimming? Mam always stood up for him. And her nerves did get worse from the minute Nain came to tell us he was missing; before that she was her usual cross self. But this is what detective stories call circumstantial evidence, not proof. I suppose the eye colour could be proof, but lots of people have dark brown eyes. Against all this circumstantial evidence is what Mam said about Bethan's father; she said he was an angel. Ifan Evans was not an angel.

‘Move your feet, Gwenni,' says Nain. She's still puttering about, picking up invisible bits, straightening the furniture, throwing wood on the fire, folding the grey blanket, plumping up the cushions on the armchairs. But Mam's pink cushion isn't here for Nain to plump up. I tried to tell Tada what Mam said about the cushion, but he didn't understand me. He said it was the only thing Mam brought with her from her mother's house and if it made her happy it was best for her to take it with her.

But the pink cushion didn't make her happy, did it? I should have burnt it like Mam burnt Mrs Llywelyn Pugh's dead fox. The cushion made Mam miserable; it reminded her every day of terrible things that should have faded in her memory. Nain Eluned wanted it to remind Mam. Because she was mad, too. When people are mad, do they become different people, or are they versions of themselves with all the horrible things about them magnified? Mam was always cross with me but after Ifan Evans disappeared she became worse and worse. I didn't tell Tada she called me Satan.

‘Where's that nuisance of a cat gone?' says Nain. ‘Did he run upstairs?'

‘He went out,' I say. ‘The noise from the ambulance scared him and he went out when you came in.'

‘Are you sure?' she says. ‘We don't want him making a mess of the beds.'

I nod. I saw John Morris run out. He doesn't run much, so he must have been frightened.

‘Right,' says Nain, standing over me, her hands on her hips. ‘Don't sit there brooding, Gwenni. That's no use to man nor beast.'

‘I'm just trying to work out how it all makes sense, Nain,' I say.

‘It doesn't,' says Nain. ‘It's life, Gwenni. Just kicks you in the teeth sometimes. You may as well get used to the idea.'

‘I won't have any teeth left if it kicks me any more,' says Bethan.

‘No good feeling sorry for yourself, Bethan,' says Nain. ‘Worse things happen at sea.'

Bethan's mouth drops open. After a second she says, ‘You're not my real grandmother so you've got no right to tell me what to do.'

Nain's face flames like the fire. ‘Your father left you in my care, young lady.'

‘He's not my real father either,' says Bethan.

‘He's as real a father as you'll ever have,' says Nain.

‘My father was an angel,' says Bethan. ‘Mam said so.' She wasn't so pleased with the idea when Mam told her.

‘Stuff and nonsense,' says Nain. ‘I've heard everything now.'

Bethan jumps up from Tada's chair. ‘I'm not staying here another minute,' she says.

I hear Nain's false teeth grind together. She takes a deep breath. ‘Go to bed, then, Bethan. You, too, Gwenni. Unless you want something to eat first. Best thing for you both would be a good night's sleep.'

My queasy stomach is back; I can feel it all the way up my throat. So I just shake my head at Nain.

Bethan stamps her foot. ‘You're so timid and stupid, Gwenni,' she says. ‘And I said I wasn't staying here and I'm not.' And she opens the living room door and then the front door and runs out into the dark.

‘For goodness' sake,' says Nain. ‘You stay here, Gwenni. I'll go and get Lol to go after the silly girl with me.' And she, too, disappears into the night.

As she vanishes, John Morris sidles in through the open door. He stops and looks all around the living room before coming in. What does he think is going on in this house? Maybe he thinks he lives in an asylum. He jumps onto Tada's chair but I don't want to sit in Mam's chair so I move John Morris there. Now I'll be able to curl up on Tada's big cushion with the smell of his Golden Virginia and his Lifebuoy soap. John Morris treads and treads in a circle on Mam's seat before he settles down. Has the rose-petal blood on her cushion rubbed off on the other cushions and the covers? It's lucky I always sit in Tada's chair.

The wood Nain put on the fire has almost burnt through, so I throw two thin pine logs on quick so no flames can catch my hand and the logs spit at me. I stamp the tiny red embers that land on the linoleum. If I was really Satan, or any devil, I would like fire, not be afraid of it, wouldn't I?

Maybe a cup of tea will push the queasiness away. I take the kettle into the scullery and fill it under the tap. The electric light is poor in here, but I can see that the walls are blue and clear as a cloudless sky. I rub the wall by the sink with my hand. There was a mouth just here that was huge with the secrets it had swallowed. But there's nothing here now. Maybe Tada did drown them all with his blue distemper. Maybe I just imagined they were returning. Or maybe they ate and swallowed so many secrets today that they got our old family stomach and lost the taste for them.

I take the kettle to the grate. The pine has made a red-hot bed for it. The water on the sides of the kettle fizzles in the heat as I lower it onto the fire. I sit in Tada's chair to wait for the kettle to boil and snuggle into his cushions and take a deep breath of his scent from them. But there's something more than his tobacco and soap; there's whiff of something that burns my nostrils. If fear had a stink this would be it. Poor Tada.

Will anything ever be the same again? Where did all of this start? Long before I was born, long before Mam was born. Here is the evidence. First there was the Great War, a terrible war. Maybe it began even further back, but I have no evidence of that. The war made my grandfather violent; my grandfather in his violence drove my grandmother to madness; my grandmother's madness made my mother ill. My mother's illness made her behave in a strange way; though it wasn't strange to her. Here, Ifan Evans comes in, before, and maybe after, my mother married my father; Tada who never wanted to leave her to go to another old war. Then come Elin Evans and the lost babies and Angharad and little Catrin. I don't have any evidence that Ifan Evans killed the babies; what Nanw Lipstick says doesn't count. Where did Ifan Evans's black dog come from? Maybe the war made someone in his family ill, too. And Mrs Llywelyn Pugh's husband had died in the war and her boys in the next war and then I made everything worse by stealing the dead fox, which Mam burnt before I could give it back. Then Elin confessed to killing Ifan because the detectives arrested Guto. She didn't want them to find out who really killed Ifan. Don't think about that. I have no evidence that any war was to blame for Guto's mam dropping him on his head. And Elin's arrest was more than poor Mrs Llywelyn Pugh could bear. When will it ever end? Mrs Williams Penrhiw said: We'll never be the same again, any of us. Is that true? Is this what Nain means when she says life gives you a kick in the teeth? It seems more like battering and bruising and breaking your whole body and maybe even killing you.

The kettle's boiling water out of its spout. I take it off the fire before it quenches the flames. I don't really want a cup of tea any more. My stomach is hurting and I want to stay here in Tada's chair and go to sleep. Maybe then I'll fly into the night sky and all this will be far away. Look at the steam rising right up to the ceiling from the kettle spout, as if it's a genie. Those Toby jugs are peering over the edge of their shelf again. I'm going to sweep them off so they'll smash into tiny pieces in the grate. Who is left to notice that they've gone?

If I stand on the arm of Tada's chair I might just be able to reach. I climb up on the knobbly cushion and then onto the arm and try to get my balance. It's difficult because there's nothing to hold on to. I can hear the brown clock; the clock that never stops. Tick-tock, tick-tock. I close my eyes and reach my arms out to stop wobbling. When I'm perfectly still I open my eyes and stretch up on my tiptoes to reach the nearest Toby jug and my feet lift off the arm of the chair and I float upwards. I bump my head on the ceiling and drop until I'm level with the mirror. My hair streams out like a fiery comet's tail beyond the mirror's frame, like the photograph of the comet's tail streaming beyond the edge of the page that Richard once showed me in a library book. I rise to the ceiling again. How strange the living room looks from here, like a room in a doll's house. I twist and curve towards the three Toby jugs. They look different, too. The handle on one of them has been broken and glued back again. Their glaze is crazed with tiny cracks and their eyes are dead specks of paint. Cobwebs weave them together on their shelf and my breath makes a panicky little spider dive into the middle jug. Their scarlet cheeks are powdered grey with dust. Why was I ever afraid of these? I leave them and fall and rise like a bird on the wing.