A String in the Harp (23 page)

“Peter’s evidently decided not to do
any
schoolwork now,” David explained. “And he won’t say why, I gather. Do you know?”

Jen shook her head. “No.”

“Has he said much to you about school?”

“Not since I first came and he complained about learning Welsh. He never mentions it, but he seems to do quite a lot of reading. Could it be,” she hesitated, “too hard?”

“Nonsense,” said David roundly. “He’s not stupid, though he sometimes
acts
it.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Morgan, but I do agree with you. I am sure he can do the work that I assign without trouble, though he has never been exactly eager. It is just that since the holidays he has stopped doing any. If it weren’t that I could see him at his desk each day, I would say he wasn’t even in class. I had wondered if perhaps something at Christmas had upset him?”

“Jen?”

“I don’t know.” Jen felt resentful; she was being put on the spot by both David
and
Peter and it wasn’t fair. “
I
didn’t do anything.”

“Of course not,” said David. “But you mustn’t be reluctant to tell me if you know what has happened. I really would like to understand Peter better. I might be of some help to him if I did. I suppose a lot of this is my fault. I’ve lost my temper with him so often, I know he won’t come to me by himself now. We’re both much too stubborn.”

Mr. Griffith coughed gently. “I think perhaps I should get on home, Mr. Morgan. I am sorry to have come on such an errand, but I thought it was my place to. And if I can help in any way, please do call on me and I will do what I can.”

“Yes. Thank you, Mr. Griffith, I’m grateful to you for coming.” David saw the teacher out, then turned to Jen. “I like him.”

“He seems nice,” she said cautiously.

“He’s the kind of teacher who really cares about teaching. They’re lucky to have him here.”

“I ought to get back to the kitchen.” Jen escaped.

***

At dinner Jen and Becky did valiantly at providing conversation. Becky went cheerfully on about Rhian’s family and Mrs. Davies’s daughter.

“Mrs. Davies says she’s gotten simply huge.”

“Why?” asked David absently.

“She’s pregnant, of course,” Becky told him impatiently. “Only Mrs. Davies says it must be twins. She’s having a terrible time with varicose veins, you know.”

“Oh.” David looked as if he wished he hadn’t asked.

Jen plunged into a description of grocery shopping and how different it was from shopping in Amherst where you just went to a supermarket. Here you had to go from shop to shop to shop. And a week from tonight Mrs. Davies had told her she’d be away, so Jen would have to cook her first supper alone.

“Peter,” said David at last, “I suppose you know I had a talk with Mr. Griffith this afternoon.”

Peter was carefully cleaning his plate.

“He’s concerned about you,” David went on quietly. “He said he spoke to you last Thursday.”

Peter nodded. He was trying to decide how he should react. His father was being too calm.

“I’m concerned, too, Peter. I know you’re capable of doing your work, so does Mr. Griffith, so it’s not that. There has to be another reason, but Mr. Griffith said you wouldn’t give him one. And to be perfectly honest with you”—they all three waited—“I don’t know what to do next. It’s obvious you feel you can’t talk to me, and I don’t seem to get through to you either. You can miss a bit of school, just as Jen can, that isn’t what bothers me.”

There was a peculiar expression on Peter’s face. “What are you going to do?”

“What would you suggest? I’m not going to stand over you every time you have an essay to write. It wouldn’t do either of us any good, would it? Just make it worse. I won’t threaten or bargain with you. I guess what it comes down to is that I’m not going to do anything right away.” His eyes were on his puzzled son, and there was just the hint of a smile around his mouth. “But I
did
mean what I said yesterday about not going out without telling me.”

And he got up and left the table while his three children looked at each other.

“Well,” said Becky in wonder. “I thought he’d yell at you at least. I wish he’d tell me
my
homework doesn’t matter!”

“He was so furious Sunday,” said Jen, “perhaps he used it up?”

“It’s psychological warfare,” Peter said thoughtfully. “I wonder if . . .” But his voice trailed away and he never finished the sentence. “I’m going to take a bath,” he announced.

Becky shook her head at Jen when he’d gone. “Why can’t people behave the way you expect them to? It’s so confusing. They don’t either one of them seem upset.”

“Well,
I
am,” Jen declared. “It sounds as if Dad’s given up, and I don’t like it. This is serious.”

“Maybe he’s just decided shouting doesn’t help,” suggested Becky.

Jen wondered. She didn’t see that ignoring Peter’s behavior was going to make him change it. He just seemed to be getting further away from them. And it was worse now because outside people, like Mr. Griffith, were beginning to notice.

“Becky,” she said firmly, “has Peter been talking to you?”

“About what?” Becky was sorting knives and forks noisily.

“You know about what.”

“The Key.” Becky met Jen’s eyes steadily. “Why don’t you say so?”

“Because it’s nonsense. I don’t believe in it and you shouldn’t either.”

“But,” Becky pointed out, “it doesn’t matter whether we believe in it or not—
Peter
does. And he has the Key and you won’t convince him it’s nonsense no matter how hard you try.”

“You’re quite sure he does believe in it?” Jen challenged.

“Positive.”

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

“No. It only bothers me because it’s making such a lot of problems. I don’t see why Peter can’t believe what he wants to. You can’t stop him, can you?”

“What if I could?” said Jen. “Suppose I could convince him it isn’t true.”

“How?”

“I’ll talk to Dr. Rhys.”

“Would you really?” asked Becky. “Would you dare?”

“Of course, I would. Don’t be silly. He’s a friend of Dad’s, isn’t he? And he knows a lot about legends and history.” The idea of going to Dr. Rhys had been at the back of Jen’s mind for several days. Becky had pushed it into the open. It did make her a little nervous, but she wasn’t going to let Becky see that. Instead, she said, “You can come, too. I think you ought to. We’ll do it tomorrow, right away. I even know where his office is.” With Becky along, Jen knew she’d have to go through with it and that would help.

***

With the coming of dusk, the weather had begun to change, but no one noticed until after supper when they all sat in the lounge busy with books and writing paper. Outside Bryn Celyn the wind was up, rushing around the corners of the house, doubling on itself, twisting backwards. Puffs of it kept coming down the chimney making the coal fire flicker and smoke and blowing clouds of soot into the room. The windows rattled in their frames and the curtains danced eerily.

Jen read the same scene of
King Lear
twice without understanding a sentence, and Becky kept looking up from the vocabulary list she was writing.

“This is hopeless!” exclaimed Jen at last. She put down her book and turned on the television, hoping to drown the wind. But it didn’t work; the wind drowned the television instead and made Jen and Becky even more aware of the restless dark outside. Several times they heard David come out of his study and check the front door and the kitchen. The air was full of a waiting violence barely restrained, the tension that builds just before a storm.

“I think we’re all tired,” Jen said after a bit. “It wouldn’t do any of us harm to go to bed early tonight.”

“Not me,” said Becky quickly. “I’ll stay down here until you’re ready.”

Jen looked at her in surprise. “You don’t mind going to bed alone—you never have.”

“I’d mind tonight. I don’t like the wind.”

At half-past eight Peter came and joined them, curling himself into the window chair without a word. He had brought nothing with him but sat looking into the fire, his hands on his knees. And the wind tore at itself in fury, howling like a great pack of wild beasts. There was no rain.

Everyone jumped when David came in. “Quite a night,” he commented. “Radio said nothing about a storm this evening.”

“They’re often wrong,” said Jen, remembering washlines full of wet laundry. “Unless you wait long enough.”

“It’s from the north,” Peter said in his chair. “They’ve come from the north.”

“They?”
Jen gave him a queer look.

“I mean the wind. It sounds like ‘they’.”

“It does a bit,” David agreed. “We get the full force of it here. Right down from the mountains of Snowdonia like a battering ram. Nothing to protect us.”

Peter curled himself tighter.

“Well,” said David after a minute, “I’m going to bed pretty sharp. Can’t do any useful work with this racket.”

“Let’s all go,” Becky suggested.

David had just checked the kitchen door a last time and Peter was brushing his teeth, when Jen called out from the front bedroom, her voice urgent.

“Come and see what’s happening, will you?”

She and Becky stood by the window in the dark room, Jen holding the curtain back. David came to stand beside them, and Peter a moment later.

“What do you suppose they’re doing out there?”

There was no mistaking what Jen meant: below the bluff, the narrow string of lights that marked the town ran straight up to the river as usual, and to the left lay the great empty bay. But to the right the blackness of the Bog was pierced with lights, a great many of them moving about rapidly in no particular pattern. They looked like flaming torches, leaping and dancing in the wind, flaring white-orange. On the far side of the Bog, along what must be both banks of the river, were bonfires. Every now and then a small black figure would pass in front of one.

Jen could feel Becky shivering beside her. David put a hand on Becky’s shoulder, reassuring.

“What are they?” Jen asked again.

“I really don’t know,” said David.

“But they’re walking all over the Bog!” said Becky. “How can they?”

As she spoke a sudden burst of flame erupted into the night sky from the dark hillside to the east, high up the slope. Someone must have touched off a huge pile of dry wood that had been set ready. It blazed like a signal beacon above the Bog. And the wind roared with new fury.

“I don’t like it one bit,” declared Becky. “I don’t care what it is.”

“That fire must be right near . . .” Jen stopped abruptly, remembering the ruined
hafod.
She felt cold.

“Foel Goch,” supplied Peter.

“You know the place?” asked David.

Becky answered, “Rhian took us up there with Gwilym during vacation.”

There was a moment’s silence, which David broke. “All right,” he said briskly, “there’s bound to be a perfectly simple reason for all of that. It could be farmers getting a cow out of the Bog or some peculiar kind of celebration.”

“Really?” Becky sounded hopeful.

“Really. The English celebrate Guy Fawkes Day with bonfires and fireworks, we celebrate the Fourth of July, the Welsh must celebrate something like that. Britain’s full of obscure folk customs and rites. We just weren’t told. Now”—he pulled the curtain out of Jen’s hand and drew it firmly across the window—“there’s a terrific draft here and, Jen, you haven’t even got slippers on. Into bed, all of you, before we catch pneumonia standing here! Someone’ll tell us what we missed in the morning and we’ll be sorry we didn’t see it properly. Go! Everyone!”

***

The Key throbbed with excitement. It sang a fierce, joyous battle song, drowning Peter in its frenzy. The wind from the north was Maelgwn, sweeping out of Gwynedd, leaping the Dyfi as if it were no more than a trickle, challenging Gwyddno’s hastily formed army to do battle on Cors Fochno. There was no modern ritual out there, no celebration—there was war. Peter knew it but could tell no one. Who would believe him if he said that in the sixth century two armies had fought each other on Borth Bog and that was what they were seeing now?

Taliesin’s voice rose above the uproar, chanting strange Cymric words that pounded and sang in Peter’s head. Taliesin was urging the men of the Cors to hold their ground, to do their utmost against the odds.

All night the wind continued to scream unabated. The curtains in the front bedroom stayed shut, but neither Jen nor Becky slept well. Lying awake in the seething dark, Jen heard Becky turn restlessly, and once she heard David come to their door and pause, then go downstairs. To Peter, she supposed. She clung grimly to what her father had said about the lights on the Bog—that they were real and could be explained away sensibly. She had to believe that . . .

***

“Are you all right?”

The darkness in Peter’s room was complete. “Yes,” said Peter.

“Can you sleep?” asked David.

“I think so.”

“Good night then.” The door shut, and Peter heard his father go back down the hall. The stairs creaked as he went up to his room.

For one desperate moment Peter longed to call David back again, to tell him, no, he couldn’t sleep, to ask him to stay for a while. The hugeness of the battle seemed unbearable. He remembered the flood, the great sheets of black water, the dyke crumbling into the sea, trees and huts torn away, and the wretched feeling of utter helplessness. He could only watch: he, Peter could do nothing to prevent any of it. And it was happening again. The pattern was set by the past and could not be altered. He was only a spectator, not of that time, and therefore powerless.

Gwyddno’s ragged troops fought valiantly for him and for what was left of their country, but they could only hope to hold Cors Fochno against the men of Gwynedd and tire them if they could. These were country men: farmers, fishermen, herdsmen—not trained warriors; they could not defeat Maelgwn’s army with force.

The Dragon’s attack at night had been unexpected. He had chosen the weapon of surprise against Gwyddno, but once that surprise wore off, Gwyddno had the advantage, for
he knew the country they fought on: the hills, the Bog, the river. And he had lit the great signal fire on Foel Goch, which would call men to Cors Fochno from miles east and south. They came on foot or horseback with all speed to reinforce those already fighting.