A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees (13 page)

The doctor is young, Irish, and has picked up very little Welsh. He had joined the
Mimosa
fresh from medical college. He had few ties and was looking for adventure, but a life in Patagonia has not lived up to his expectations. He has an easy-going nature and has found life with these Welsh colonists a little too intense. ‘Intense,' that is the English word he uses to Silas when they talk. Silas has to ask Selwyn for a translation.

‘Too holy,' Selwyn explains, and grins.

Silas has noticed that the doctor himself grins little these days and has less to say. When he first came aboard he had made some effort to learn the language, but just recently he seems to have given up. Instead he has taken to resorting to signs and odd words.

‘Why did you not go back with the
Mimosa
?' Silas had asked him once through Selwyn. It is what I'd have done, he'd thought. After all the doctor had the means – no doubt the
Mimosa
needed a ship's doctor on the way back just as much as she'd needed one on the way out. The doctor had shrugged in reply. ‘I had to stay,' he'd said once, ‘the colony needed me.' Another time he'd said Edwyn Lloyd had persuaded him. But eventually he'd admitted that he couldn't face another voyage on the same ship as Captain Gidsby.

‘The man was… ill,' he said, pointing to his temple, ‘up here.'

Then, when Silas had asked him why he'd said that, he'd pulled at his hair and grimaced: ‘Nits. Remember?'

Silas had returned the grimace – ‘nits' is a word the doctor came to know well on board the
Mimosa
. It was the first time any of them had encountered the Jones family; the daughter, Miriam, had been engaged in a tug of war with the captain. It had been a struggle that neither was likely to win since they were well matched in height and weight. John Jones' daughter was striking. Tall and thin with a black fuzz of hair topped with a small white cap, long pale face, sharp nose and small brown eyes like raisins.

‘Mam, Mam!' Her voice had been shrill as the two had crossed the deck together in a slow strange dance – his hands entangled in her hair and her feet aiming kicks at his legs and at any other place she could reach.

‘Mam!' By this time the other Joneses had appeared: Mary, John, and two of their other four children. John was small and stringy and Mary was shaped like a cannon ball – her girth roughly matching her height – but their sons were both tall like Miriam, with arms like truncheons. They advanced on the pair together and then suddenly stopped. There was a glint of grey metal and polished wood: a gun. The Jones family paused for about three seconds and then Mary, six months pregnant and consequently more spherical than ever, reached forward and grabbed the gun. There was a single shot that caused everyone to drop down and when they all looked up again the captain and Mary were looking at each other with the gun between them on the floor.

It didn't take long for Jacob to find out the reason for the rumpus: the captain had been told by one of the sailors that some of the girls had nits so he had ordered the first mate to ‘fleece the lot of them'. Unfortunately he, and the first mate, had chosen the first ewe unwisely.

The doctor, as an Irishman, and outsider, had been called in as judge.

‘The Welsh are a clean race,' Jacob had said grandly and, thought Silas, somewhat sweepingly.

In the end the doctor, with a wry smile, claimed to find nits only on one person – the completely bald head of Caradoc Llewellyn, the Baptist minister.

There have been few smiles from the doctor since then. By the time they landed in Patagonia his face seemed already to set into a frown, with pair of perpendicular and parallel lines on his forehead that have deepened week by week. All he seems to be able to do is oversee the passage of children into the world – only to see them out of it again a few months later. Silas looks at his face with pity. How miserable it must be to feel so powerless one day after the next. Gwyneth is the third child to die in less than a month. He turns all these thoughts over in his head. It's not hurting yet. It's as if some large part of him has just been scalded and he is waiting for the pain to start.

‘But why did she die?' he asks, but the doctor shrugs and shakes his head.

‘It must have been something.'

‘Fever,' he says, which they both know is no answer at all.

Megan is pale and mute. When Silas makes her some tea she sips it as if she is a child.

Myfanwy tugs at her dress. ‘Mam?'

But Megan has retreated again. After she has finished the tea she stands, tucks in the blankets of Gwyneth's cot as if the child is still there, and then walks to the fire to rearrange the kindling.

‘Mam?' Myfanwy's voice is uncertain. ‘Mam?' This time it ends in a breathy sob. Silas picks his remaining daughter up in his arms. ‘Leave your mother in peace for a while,
cariad fach
.'

‘Why, Dadda? What's wrong with her? Where's Gwyneth?'

‘Your Mam's sad. Jesus has called your sister to heaven to be with him too.'

‘Will Jesus want me next?'

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because...' His voice breaks. He can't carry on. Why? The pain has suddenly arrived in an overwhelming wave and taken away his voice. Instead he presses her to him and for once she doesn't struggle but rests there peacefully.

‘Dadda?'

‘No more questions now.'

‘When will Jesus want me too?'

He rocks her gently against him. ‘I said no more questions.'

She wrestles herself from his grip and looks at him.
‘Dadda?

He can't bear to answer, can hardly dare to speak. He desperately thinks of something else to interest her. ‘Did you see the soldiers go?' he says at last.

She nods her head.

‘Did you see the track they made?'

She nods again. ‘Where did they go?'

‘Back to their home.'

‘When are we going home, Dadda?'

The question jolts him a little from his misery. He is surprised she still remembers. Five months must seem like a lifetime ago to a five-year-old child.

‘This is our home now,
cariad
.'

‘But what about...?' Then she catches his eye and stops. She places the tip of her thumb in her mouth and frowns as if she is thinking. ‘We're going to stay here for Jesus to find us too, aren't we Dadda?' She waits for him to reply and when nothing comes carries on. ‘Otherwise he won't know where we are, and he'll look and look and look for us and never ever find us – and then we won't see Gwyneth and Richard in heaven.'

She waits a few moment for him to answer and when he does not tells herself, ‘That's right, Myfanwy.' And leans heavily against him. ‘Good girl,' she says dreamily.

In the morning Megan doesn't rise but lies quite still facing the wall. Silas leans over to look at her. Her eyes are open but it is as if she is staring at something far away. Myfanwy is still asleep. He picks her up gently and puts her to lie beside her mother. She murmurs and presses herself against Megan's warm back.

‘Cuddle up close now,
cariad
,' he says and creeps out with a bucket for water.

‘I'm so sorry,' Mary Jones says, when she sees him in front of the fort, ‘John told me last night. If there's anything I can do to help...' Her voice fades for a few seconds, ‘but I don't suppose there is, really.' She looks down at her baby cooing in her arms and the two toddlers standing passively each side of her, and Silas thanks her and says that they will cope. She looks at him solemnly. She manages her family with a serious unsmiling efficiency – now a brood of six children. With her stubby frame, and equally stubby face and nose, she is as unlike her lanky daughter as it is possible to be. Whereas John and Mary are small and quiet, their children are large and loud. The three older ones stride around the place like over-sized puppies, yapping at each other in conversation that includes no one else, although Miriam sometimes manages a smile at the people she sometimes notices around her. Although too pale to look truly healthy, they never seem to sicken and as he regards her three youngest children he feels a slight pang of envy. For the Jones family life seems to continue unremarkably, without incident. Even the birth of their latest offspring at Port Madryn was not dramatic. In the shade of a hill which now bears the child's name. According to the doctor it was an easy delivery.

Silas walks on to the river but someone is already there. Cecilia Lloyd wringing out clothes then piling them into her basket. She seems so young and vulnerable. She's aged about twenty-five he'd guess. Everything about her is unremarkable; from her ordinary-looking brown hair that is piled on top of her head, to her pale, unexpressive face underneath. It is so blank that it is as if her mind has been stubbed out inside. He sits out of sight behind a bush and watches her. Her face is perfect – each feature in proportion – but somehow not at all beautiful. Her eyes are a dull hazel, her lips neither broad nor thin, her nose neither retroussé nor long. As she passes him he can smell the soap she has used to wash the clothes and can see her hands red and raw with the coldness of the water and the wind. She's thinner than he'd realised, or maybe, like the majority of the colonists, she has lost weight. She walks slowly up to the fort, her head tipped down. After waiting a few minutes he fills his bucket and follows her back.

Edwyn's cottage has a prime spot, high up, using part of the fort wall for support. She spends several minutes laying the clothes out in the sun to dry and then enters the house. Although she draws the door to, it doesn't quite reach the doorframe. Silas sneaks closer, pretending that something on the wall has caught his eye and he is examining it.

‘That Baptist minister – Llewellyn – is he alone?' Edwyn's voice, speaking softly yet clearly audible through the turf wall.

‘Caradoc? No, he has a wife, Martha.'

‘Anything I should know about her?'

‘Martha – ah, a mousy little thing, prefers her own company – but she is secretly very fond of piano music which her husband thinks is akin to worshipping the Devil. She's had several miscarriages, I think – not one came to term – and she lost her mother shortly before the ship sailed. She's very quiet – much in thrall to that husband of hers.'

‘Ah. And Caradoc himself is almost fifty – about ten years her senior. Is that right?'

‘Yes. A second marriage, just like John Jones – do you remember? The first wife died twelve years ago.' Her voice, like her face, is almost without expression.

‘Are they for us or against us?'

‘A little against at the moment, though not as much as some.'

‘And your recommendation?'

‘The piano is important to Martha; I think she is envious of the little organ the Williams family managed to smuggle over. Maybe if you happen to mention your admiration for... Bach.'

‘Bach? Are you sure?'

‘Oh yes, Martha Llewellyn would be very interested. Mention the Toccata and Fugue in D minor...'

Suddenly someone calls from the entrance to the fort. ‘Silas! I'm so sorry! I just heard.' Selwyn. He comes hurrying towards him and the voices inside the cottage are suddenly silent. Cecilia's face appears at the door, her eyes slightly wide. She glances at Silas and her mouth opens. ‘Have you...?' She stops and closes her mouth and Edwyn appears beside her. He steps towards Silas with his arms outstretched.

‘Ah Silas, I heard about your loss. I'm so sorry. Gwyneth, wasn't it? Such a dear little one. All during that dreadful voyage south there was not a peep out of her. I used to say to my dear Cecilia it was probably because she was born at sea. That's right, isn't it?'

And suddenly it hurts. It hurts so much he can't speak. A scald. Searing his body like a flame. He drops the bucket and starts to run.

When he returns to his cottage Megan is dressing Myfanwy in her best clothes. They both turn to look as he stops at the threshold and sinks where he stands.

‘I'm sorry,' he gasps and Megan comes close and holds his head against her skirt.

‘I know,' she says, over and over again. ‘I know, I know, I know.'

It is Megan who is strong this time. She smiles and talks for Myfanwy, sweeps the house, cooks, even helps with the clearing of the ground and the digging, while Silas weeps, digs a little in the field and weeps again. ‘I'm sorry,' he tells her, ‘I'll get better.' And she smoothes his hair, kisses him and tells him that it's all right.

‘How can you go on?' he asks her once, and she says she is holding it in like a breath – then letting that breath out a gasp at a time, and that way it hurts, but not as much.

Today she is in the warehouse with Jacob and Myfanwy. Jacob has taken it upon himself to make an inventory of the stock but he doesn't seem to have made much progress. Silas stops at the threshold, listening.

‘How many was that?'

‘Six, no, that was last time, eight... er...'

‘Are you sure this time?'

‘Well...'

A loud sigh and then: ‘Shall we start again, Jacob?'

‘I suppose we should.'

‘And concentrate this time.'

‘I always concentrate. It's your fault – you're not making a note when I say.'

‘Well, you keep distracting me with all this talk about Indians.'

Silas steps over the threshold so they can see him. ‘What talk about Indians?' he asks.

Jacob turns around, his mouth slightly open. A notepad trembles in his hand. ‘Ah, Silas.' A pause. Myfanwy runs to her father and pulls at his trousers. ‘I want a drink, but Mam says I've go to wait.'

Silas pats her on the head absentmindedly. ‘What's this about Indians?' he asks again.

Jacob is grateful for the question. ‘Just a request for trade,' he says, trying to appear nonchalant, ‘a letter from one of the chiefs. Murga gave it to Edwyn – and we had a meeting to discuss it, but of course you… well, we didn't want to trouble you.' He pauses, examines Silas' face and then continues. ‘Seems harmless enough to me, but Megan seems to think that we should be preparing for an attack.' He sits heavily on the nearest sack, his knees outspread, and the chain of his pocket watch glittering across his waistcoat. Now that things are more settled he has clearly managed to locate his shaving knife. He is sprucely turned out, but there is a small stain on the collar of his jacket, and his outspread fingers are covering a tear on his trousers. Not for the first time it occurs to Silas that Jacob is in desperate need of a good woman.

Myfanwy gives up with her father and stands by the door. ‘Mam, I'm thirsty!'

Megan takes her daughter by the hand. ‘I just think we should be wary, that's all.'

‘But Edwyn says it's quite normal. Nothing at all to worry about.'

‘Mam!' Myfanwy pulls her mother through the door and their footsteps fade into the distance.

Jacob and Silas look at each other. ‘But we should take no notice of Edwyn Lloyd. The man is an idiot,' Silas says, ‘and no one in their right mind should trust him. Look at the result of his lies. First Richard – and now Gwyneth.'

‘That is the Lord's doing, Silas,' Jacob says gently, reaching over to him and patting him on the shoulder. ‘It's not Edwyn's fault. The Good Lord called them to Him. It was their time.'

Silas shakes him off then steps back to glare at him. ‘Why do you insist on defending him?'

For a few moments there is silence. Silas is aware of something giving inside. It is as if something is boiling within him. Something like milk in a pan.

‘It's what happens. Children die. It happens at home and it happens here. You can't blame Edwyn Lloyd. If the good Lord wants them he will take them.'

Silas clenches his teeth and shakes his head.

Jacob sighs. ‘I know he's got some things wrong, Silas, he's only human after all. But he's doing his best... and the way he handled the government officials – surely you have to admire that?'

The bubbles inside him rise – hot and uncontrollable. ‘No! No, I do not.' He is shouting now but he doesn't care. ‘The man has deceived us – haven't you realised that yet?'

Jacob tries to hush him but Silas takes no notice. ‘Do you know why we're really here? Do you?'

Jacob is silent now, open-mouthed.

‘We're just Argentine pawns, Selwyn told me. If we're here, the Chileans can't claim the land. They're not interested in the Welsh. All they want are more Spanish-speaking Argentines. What will be worse? The English or the Argentines?'

‘I'm sure you're wrong about that,
brawd
. Edwyn Lloyd would have told us, I'm sure.'

‘Would he? Are you sure? Come with me, look.'

Jacob follows him outside and Silas points to the flag. ‘What is that? What does it mean? Is that part of a New Wales? Or something worse than the old one?'

Megan is mending one of his shirts when Silas returns to the cottage. The place has been swept, the dishes and clothes put away. She has a frantic air about her, as if she is finding it difficult to keep still. She smiles too brightly when he enters and agrees too vehemently when he suggests he makes tea. Everything is too slow and too difficult. The twigs he has collected for the fire burn too slowly; the rough table he has made is too rickety and uneven for the pot; and when he tries to pick up the kettle it slips from his grasp and steam scalds his hand. He slams it down and turns to her.

‘Why did we come?' His voice is quiet and intense. ‘Tell me Megan. Remind me.'

She doesn't answer, just continues with her sewing, stabbing the needle into the cloth again and again with swift vicious movements. At her feet Myfanwy plays silently with her doll, pretending to sew too. He knows the answer: Jacob. Her sanctimonious brother with his smug confidence in God and even greater faith in Gabriel Thomas – the principal of an insignificant college for ministers in Bala. Jacob had made a career of confirming that man's prejudices and conceptions of the world and, in reward for this unquestioning support, had been granted a position teaching at the college. It was there that Jacob had heard about Gabriel's scheme to populate Patagonia, and there that he had encountered Edwyn Lloyd. Oh, how unlucky it had been that the
Meistr
had happened to come along to the college with his big ideas just a few weeks after the incident with Trevor Pritchard and his dogs. Silas had always suspected his brother-in-law of a certain missionary zeal, but never expected to be amongst his potential converts.

Silas remembers opening the door to Jacob that day: his inane smile on his broad big face, made to look even more inane somehow by that carefully cultivated fringe of beard. The cottage was almost empty, all their good furniture already sold to pay off their debts. Jacob had taken it all in as he'd stood on the doorstep, his pale-green eyes blinking underneath the shadow of a wide-brimmed hat.

Jacob had been told the story immediately – crisp short sentences from Megan – while he'd stood in front of the fire, his jacket open, warming his hands. Then, when she had finished, he had turned to them with his shoulders squeezed up to his ears, one hand clutched in the other in front of him, grinning – like a child anticipating a treat.

‘Oh, this is the Good Shepherd's work! He has sent me here for you now!' Then he had shut his eyes and clutched his hands together in front of his face. ‘Thank you Lord, your servant is listening.' Then he had looked around at them and grinned. ‘Wait until you hear. Oh such wonderful news – at last my Lord has told me how I am to bear witness for Him.'

Then he had told them about Patagonia, and the Emigration Society in Liverpool that was set on establishing a colony there. It was then that Silas had first heard the name of Edwyn Lloyd: ‘...a great man, you have to meet him. He has been over there with one of his gentlemen friends from Port Madoc. They scouted around the place and he says it's a wonderful place, a new Eden, a paradise.' He'd looked around to make sure everyone was listening. ‘And the best news – I am to be the minister. Such a great honour. That is why I am here. I have to persuade more people to come with me.' He'd paused to draw breath. ‘Will you come? You have nothing to keep you here, have you? Nothing at all. In Patagonia you will be able to do what you want when you want with no interference from anyone.'

Silas had looked at Megan and to his surprise she had immediately smiled back. ‘Why not?' she'd said. ‘Jacob is right. What have we got to keep us here? Mam is gone. Da is gone.' Then she'd swept her arms out to indicate the bare walls of the cottage. ‘And soon all this will be gone too.'

‘But where is it? How far? There could be wild animals, or people! No!' He'd folded his arms and shaken his head. ‘We can't just leave home just like that!'

‘The children would grow up free citizens,' Jacob had said, watching Myfanwy totter towards him on her newly discovered legs.

But Silas had sat down on a box and shaken his head. They were both mad. Patagonia! He didn't even know where it was.

Megan had walked up to him and put her arm around his shoulder. ‘Please say yes, Silas. There's nothing left for us here, you've said it yourself.'

He looked up at them both: the two broad faces both smiling appealingly at him. It was as though something heavy and powerful was pushing him along, something he couldn't resist, but still he had to try.

‘No,' he'd said, ‘I can't. What about Muriel? I can't leave her.'

‘Muriel doesn't need you, Silas – she's got Sam. Please, Silas! Just think of it – isn't it extraordinary that Jacob should come here today, of all days, with this news?'

‘It will cost twelve pounds for each adult and six pounds for each child, but you only need to pay a fraction of this now...' Jacob had paused and continued more quietly ‘...and I have it on good authority that any Welshman who wishes to go, will go, regardless of payment, the Emigration Society will see to that.'

‘You see, Silas – we won't have to pay a penny! Everything's worked out for us. It must be fate telling us to go!'

‘No, Megan – the Lord.'

‘Then we must!'

Silas wanted everything to stop. Surely it was not too much to ask for time to take a breath, to stand back and consider – but he was not going to be given the chance.

Megan had smoothed his head as though he was her favourite cat. ‘What do you say, Si?' she'd said softly.

‘I'll think about it.'

Then Megan had smiled – they both knew he had lost already.

If Megan remembers all this she says nothing. She just continues to sew and smile. He paces up to the fire in the hearth and pokes at it with a stick. Not my fault, he thinks. He can't bear the quiet so he sits next to her on the crude bench and starts to talk. He tells her about the Argentines and Edwyn Lloyd, about Selwyn and her brother, and all the while Megan continues to silently smile and sew, the needle not pausing in its movement, one tiny glint of metal swiftly following the last. At last he stops and holds her to him. Not her fault, either.