A String in the Harp (15 page)

She’d been cheated out of her vacation. Instead of being welcomed and fussed over, she’d been set down in the middle of a bitter quarrel that seemed to have no possible resolution, but hurt everyone it touched. Why on earth had she wanted to come, she wondered bleakly. Depression like this was new to her: it was cold and faceless, rising from the pit of her stomach and paralyzing her mind.

“Jennifer?” David stood, oddly hesitant, in the doorway. “I was afraid you’d gone to bed.”

“I was just going.” She got to her feet without looking at him. When he called her Jennifer, she always wondered what was coming next.

“Would you come into the study for a few minutes? Would you come and talk?” He was asking, not telling. She
followed him down the hall, wary. David sat heavily in the easy chair, his hands restless on his knees. His eyes were tired and sad. Jen, looking at his face, thought again of a stranger and waited.

“I’m sorry I lost my temper at supper,” he said at last. “I shouldn’t have. I suppose Peter was just trying to provoke me.”

Jen wasn’t at all sure of that. She wondered if her father saw Peter’s misery, but she was silent and he went on.

“I know it hasn’t been particularly easy for him here. I don’t think it’s been easy for any of us, even Becky, though she seems to have come off best. But I get so tired of hearing Peter complain. He’s a problem, Jen. I can’t think what’s gotten into him. I wondered if he’d talked to you at all, told you why he’s so dead set against being here?”

“He’s homesick,” said Jen, because he expected her to say something.

David sighed. “Everyone is at first. But Peter—I thought he’d like it here. I thought he’d find it exciting.”

“He wants to go home.”

David gave a little snort. “Even I can tell that, Jen. I hoped you could tell me a bit more.”

Jen bit her lip. He wasn’t angry with her, but he was talking to her as if she were an adult and it made her uncomfortable. “I was just telling you what he’d said to me,” she answered defensively.

“I came here,” said David slowly, “because I couldn’t think what else to do. It wouldn’t have been any good to stay in Amherst this year. All I could see was your mother. I thought by getting right away to a place that was new to all of us, I could clear my head again. We could straighten ourselves out.” He spoke softly, almost to himself. “I wanted life to be as different as I could make it. To break off and start again.”

“But you
can’t
forget Mother!” Jen protested, shocked.

“I didn’t say that.” David met her eyes gravely. “But we’ve got to live without her, we have to get used to it. Memories
are important and we’ve all got them, but they don’t help much with the practical side of things. You’re old enough to understand that, even if Peter and Becky aren’t. Though I’m disappointed at Peter. I think I could make it work if it weren’t for him. Sometimes I wonder—” He broke off and gave his head a shake. “Maybe Beth was right after all, and I never should have done it. But human beings are capable of making adjustments.”

“Maybe it’s just harder for Peter,” suggested Jen tentatively.

“Harder?” David leaned back in his chair. “My God, do you think it’s been easy for me? Suddenly, I’ve got the three of you to cope with on my own as well as losing Anne.” His eyes rested on Jen’s face and he smiled a little. “Not that I’d rather I didn’t have you; I’m just not used to being responsible for the whole show. I keep thinking if we can only hang on long enough it will all work out.”

A stranger. Jen felt hoplessly confused. Her father had given her a sudden glimpse of himself she’d never seen before and a glimpse of what it was like to be an adult. She was bewildered to see it wasn’t so very different from where she was now: you didn’t know all the answers, you just had bigger responsibilities.

All the while she’d been insulated in her own cocoon of unhappiness, she’d missed her father’s grief. And he in turn missed Peter’s. It was as if they’d all built separate little rooms to live in instead of one big one. Peter’s misery was no more unique than hers. Jen could see it was going to be hard to sort this one out, and in spite of her blinding flash of truth, she didn’t know what to say to David.

“Anyway, if you can help at all with Peter, I’d be grateful,” he was saying. He didn’t sound as tense. “I still hope he’ll come around.”

“I don’t know . . .” she began doubtfully, remembering her own problems with Peter.

“Well, do what you can, will you? And don’t look so
worried—I’m through. Go on up to bed, why don’t you? I’ve still got one or two things to do here.”

Jen undressed in the dark, not wanting to wake Becky, who was snoring ever so slightly. She fell asleep, aware of an unaccustomed sympathy for her father, and woke what seemed like only moments later to find Becky bouncing excitedly on the foot of her bed.

“Merry Christmas!”

“Already?” asked Jen sleepily.

“It’s eight o’clock,” Becky informed her.
“And
it’s a beautiful day!”

“I don’t believe it.”

But it was. All the clouds of the day before had been swept off the sky by a boisterous westerly wind. It brushed the sea with white horses and sang in the electric wires. The air felt light and sharp.

The morning slid by pleasantly, with a sort of endless breakfast: oranges, cocoa, coffee, eggs, sausage, bacon, toast, as much as anyone wanted, interrupted by unwrapping presents.

The argument of the night before wasn’t mentioned, and though Peter didn’t speak to his father more than absolutely necessary, neither did he make any remarks that would annoy David.

Mrs. Davies and her plump, cheerful daughter, Susan, came in to organize dinner. Mrs. Davies raised her eyebrows at the chaos in the kitchen, but for once she didn’t say anything. And before anyone quite knew what was happening, she’d passed out jobs. Jen peeled potatoes, while Becky and David did the dishes, and Peter found himself chopping up stale bread for stuffing.

They set up the table in the lounge with a white tablecloth and two of the longer candle-ends, because, as Becky said, you couldn’t just eat a turkey dinner like boiled beef and cabbage in the kitchen. It had to be special.

The smells, thought Jen, closing her eyes for a moment,
are just like the smells of any Christmas dinner: roast turkey and gravy, beets, steaming pudding, hot and rich.

Once dinner was over, they piled everything in the sink and left it while all four of them went for a walk on the bright, windy beach. The broad, hard sands were covered with people out walking, muffled against the wind in best coats and scarves and gloves, tiny children wrapped so they looked almost spherical, dogs racing ecstatically from figure to figure.

Gulls dipped and screamed raucously on the air currents, slicing through the sky on sharp wings, and Becky sent a small party of black and white birds with long red bills crying out low over the water.

“Oystercatchers,” she told the others. “Aren’t they beautiful? Gwilym showed me.”

“Isn’t that Gwilym?” asked David. “Up there?”

“He’s watching something,” said Becky. “Come on.”

The long, thin figure stood still, looking out to sea through binoculars.

“Hullo,” said David, as they joined him. He jumped and turned around. He seemed a little overwhelmed at the sight of all the Morgans together.

“What are you watching?” Becky demanded.

“Oh, um, not much. Some fishing boats, I think.” He glanced around. “Too many people for birds.”

Peter gave Jen a nudge, which she ignored.

“Just out walking?” David asked pleasantly.

“Up to Ynyslas, I thought, sir.”

“That’s the bit of beach where the Dovey joins the sea, isn’t it?”

Gwilym nodded. “Good place for birds at low tide.”

“Isn’t there supposed to be a drowned forest somewhere down that way?”

“Yes, sir,” said Gwilym.

“You mean
underwater?”
said Becky.

Peter and Jen avoided each other’s eyes.

“You can see it at dead low tide, but the water has to be right out, which doesn’t happen that often,” explained Gwilym.

“But the trees aren’t still alive, are they?” Becky asked.

“Of course not,” said Jen.

“What does it look like then?”

“Nothing much, I should think,” said David.

“You can find tree stumps and a peat bed like in the Bog,” Gwilym said.

“When did it happen?” asked Peter.

“Some say when the Low Hundred was flooded, which’d be sixth century,” replied Gwilym.

Peter looked speculative.

“You sound well up in archaeology,” remarked David, and Gwilym’s eyes lit with pleasure.

“I know some,” he admitted. “There’s a lot to find around here, sir.”

They had begun walking again, all of them moving down the beach toward Ynyslas.

“Yes,” David said, “I’d hoped to have more time for exploring, but the University’s kept me pretty well occupied so far. Maybe when the weather gets warmer in the spring.”

“It’s a grand place for it, sir.” Gwilym sounded approving.

“But the forest,” Becky persisted. “Why did it drown?”

“I would guess the sea rose. Perhaps it’s still rising.”

“It could cover Borth?”

“Not right away.” David smiled. He turned back to Gwilym. “This whole area used to be forested once, didn’t it?”

“Hundreds of years ago, that was. Most of Wales. But it was stripped for timber and farming then. Forestry Commmission’s replanting parts of it now.”

“So it’ll look the way it used to?” Becky wanted to know.

“Not likely. To make money lumbering. Never mind how it looks and what it does to the wildlife. There.” Gwilym
pointed back, toward the hills behind the Bog. “See the patches there? That’s Forestry land.”

Regular dark green squares stood out boldly against the rust and silver of the bare slopes.

“All the same kind of tree planted together and so close there’s no light between, just so they’ll grow straight.”

“I see what you mean,” said David.

Peter stared without seeing at the rough edges of the waves on the sand. He pretended indifference to the conversation, but he was listening hard, his mind working furiously over the new information: the drowned forest, which meant a flood, the hills covered with trees once upon a time. There must have been forests at the time of the flood.

They’d passed most of the other people, and the last houses of Borth lay behind them. The sun broke and scattered on the restless bay and high over the Bog Gwilym spotted a buzzard sailing the wind on broad, ragged wings. “All around,” he said. “Cardigan’s thick with buzzards.” After a moment, he offered David his binoculars for a closer look. Doesn’t trust the rest of us, Jen thought.

“Can you see the white patches on the undersides of his wings?” asked Gwilym.

“Mmm. Very well.”

“Buzzards are the ones that hang around waiting for people to die, aren’t they?” asked Becky.

“You’re thinking of vultures,” David told her, watching the bird lift higher and higher until it was only a dot in the towering sky.

“Vultures have bald heads,” Jen added.

“No,” David disagreed, “those are eagles.”

“Bald eagles!” shouted Becky, laughing.

Gwilym smiled politely but without comprehension, and David handed back the binoculars.

“Those are good ones,” he remarked. “What power?”

“Ten by fifty.” Gwilym was back on his own territory.
“Bit big for some, but I can manage them. Dad gave them to me, got them special from Cardiff.” There was pride in his voice. “Best present I ever got.” He hung them carefully around his neck again.

David nodded. “Hard to beat good ones.”

They went on, David and Gwilym talking together, Jen and Becky joining in now and then, and Peter coming thoughtfully behind.

After all, how long ago was hundreds of years? Gwilym had said sixth century, but that would have been 500. Imagination couldn’t stretch that far, and yet vast pieces of time lay all around: in the sand underfoot, the shaping of the sea, the burnished hills, the Bog. They changed, but so gradually it was seldom noticed in a lifetime. They must all have been here fourteen hundred years ago. Suppose you could see other people’s footprints in the sand—not just the ones from this time that the tide hadn’t washed away, but the footprints every person had ever made on this beach. . . . Peter thought his head would burst.

David was saying, “We came from here, my family. My grandfather was twenty-seven when he emigrated to New England. I remember he used to speak Welsh sometimes. He came from the coal valleys in the south near Tredegar and he settled in Massachusetts.”

“And he met Great-grandmother,” Becky prompted. They all knew the story and she always loved to hear it.

David smiled at her. “Yes, he met Great-grandmother. She’d emigrated with her own family from Machynlleth when she was seventeen. I think she was always sorry she’d left Wales, she told us such stories. We always swore we’d come back one day and see it, but none of us ever did till now.” His eyes were on the mountains across the river as he spoke.

“She saw them, too, didn’t she?” Jen asked softly. “She grew up with them. It’s hard to imagine.”

“But why?” asked Becky. “Why did they leave Wales?”

“Money. A better life. It was a bad time for many people in the nineteenth century. Lots of them left. Huw Morgan’s brothers all went to Pennsylvania from Tredegar to work in the coal fields because it was what they knew, but Grandfather tried farming instead in the Connecticut Valley.”

Becky nodded, satisfied.

Gwilym had been keeping pace with David, listening in silence, but he stopped abruptly and lifted his binoculars.

“Birds?” asked David, stopping, too.

“No,” said Gwilym, “some kind of boats.”

They all looked in the direction he pointed, and on the horizon they could make out four—no, five—little black specks.

“Out by Towyn that is,” said Gwilym after a minute. “Sailing boats.”

“Good wind for it,” remarked David, shading his eyes with his hand.

“Odd shape they’ve got. Not fishing boats on Christmas Day, but too big for pleasure boats.” He passed David the binoculars. “What do you think, sir?”