A String in the Harp (6 page)

“What did you do that for?” Peter demanded, as they started back up the hill.

“Don’t be unpleasant,” Jen said. “Just because you’re antisocial, Becky and I needn’t be. Besides, he may not even come, he didn’t say he would.”

But he did. Just after four he appeared at the kitchen door looking anxious. Becky pulled him in at once and made him take off his jacket. They’d kept the kitchen shut off from the rest of the house all afternoon, and it was quite cozy.

“Mum’ll be in soon to start your dinner.”

Jen set her teeth and lit the gas under the kettle.

“I told Jen you’d taken me walking with you,” said Becky, piling biscuits on a plate. “We even went on the Bog once.”

“His mistake was bringing you back again,” remarked Peter.

“Peter!” said Jen sharply.

“I was just thinking,” said Peter, sounding defensive, “that it would be a great opportunity to get rid of someone you didn’t like. Slowly she sank into the trackless ooze, her cries growing fainter and fainter, lost in the emptiness.”

“Beast,” said Becky cheerfully. “You’re wrong—Gwilym does like me in the first place. In the second, the Bog isn’t trackless because we’ve been right across it; and in the third, someone would be bound to hear you if you yelled. Besides there are cattle grazing on it and they don’t sink.”

“Not much of a bog then, I must say.”

“Oh, but it is.” Gwilym protested seriously. “There are all kinds of rare plants on it, and scientists have found pollen from prehistoric ones in the peat. It’s very old, you know. It’s been called Cors Fochno for so long people have even forgotten what the name means.”

“But if it’s any kind of a bog why don’t things sink into it, like in quicksand?” Peter persisted.

“They do, on parts of it. Every now and again someone loses a cow. But it’s safe if you know where to walk.”

“Unlimited possibilities.” Peter grinned ghoulishly.

“What a morbid conversation!” Jen said. “I’d rather think of the prehistoric pollen!”

“It really is scientifically interesting,” said Gwilym stiffly.

“No, I mean it,” Jen assured him. “It’s just that I don’t know anything about birds or plants. But it would be fun to go out on the Bog. Would you take us sometime?”

He looked at her suspiciously, the steam from his tea fogging his spectacles mysteriously. “It’s best early in the morning.”

“How early?”

“Six o’clock or so.”

Peter groaned. “You are
mad,”
he said. “Why are plants any better at six in the morning than at eleven?”

“It’s birds at six.”

Peter was about to make a sarcastic reply when Mrs. Davies opened the back door, letting in a blast of cold air.

“Oh, there you are,” she said, seeing Gwilym. “I expected you’d be out wandering on them dunes.”

“We met him this morning and asked him to tea,” Becky explained.

“Much better, too.” Mrs. Davies nodded in approval. “Spending time with kids your own age than out all day by yourself with them binoculars. Just what I’ve been telling you.”

Gwilym looked dreadfully uncomfortable. He appeared to have taken an unusual interest in the arrangement of empty mugs on the table, and Jen sympathized silently. To have a mother like Mrs. Davies—but, no, it didn’t do to think too much about mothers.

“Well, you can all lend a hand clearing up, so I can get your meal started.”

***

When David came home at six, he found pots on the stove bubbling quietly and his three children sitting peacefully around the kitchen table reading. Mrs. Davies and Gwilym had gone home.

“Good day?”

“Mmm,” said Jen, not looking up from her book. She’d
found a battered guide to Mid-Wales on a shelf in the lounge and was reading the part about Borth and Aberystwyth.

“We met Gwilym,” said Becky. “Down on the beach. He told us about having tourists stay in their house.”

“What’s supper?”

“Well, you know it has to be either boiled or fried.” Peter closed his book. “Boiled tonight.”

David gave him an irritated glance.

“It certainly is a peculiar-looking area,” Jen remarked hastily. “I mean all this flat land. The rest of Cardigan seems to be mountains.”

“They call them hills here,” corrected David with a smile. “You find anything interesting?”

“I do wonder why they built a town here.” Jen showed her father a picture of Borth taken from their cliff top. “It isn’t a very comfortable sort of place with the sea on one side and the Bog on the other.”

“The beach,” explained David briefly. “Good place for tourists. It isn’t a very old town, but there’s a lot of interest here.”

Peter raised his eyebrows but kept still, to Jen’s relief.

“Gwilym says he’ll take us all out on the Bog,” said Becky.

“That should be fascinating.”

“I’m sure he’d take you, too.”

Ruefully David shook his head. “I’ve got far too much work to do right now to go on expeditions. But you should be all right with Gwilym. He knows the country well, I understand. Is dinner ready?”

Jen glanced at her watch. “Oh, help! It should have been off the stove ten minutes ago!”

After a frantic scramble they all sat down to another overdone meal. Then Jen, Peter, and Becky sat on and played Hearts until Becky’s bedtime.

“I don’t see why I should have to go to bed earlier than anyone else during the holidays,” she protested.

“The youngest person always goes to bed first—that’s the rule,” Peter told her callously. “Then you can get up first in the morning.”

“Thank you very much!” retorted Becky. “It’s a dumb rule!”

“They usually are,” Peter replied.

When Becky had gone, Jen got out her book again. Peter sat watching her until she felt slightly uneasy. “Well?” she said at last, looking up.

“Can we talk?” he asked, his voice tense.

Jen wasn’t at all sure she wanted to, but she nodded. “About what?”

“You know. This place.”

“It doesn’t seem too bad to me actually,” she began cautiously.

“Oh, Jen!” Peter was agonized. “It’s awful! It’s a hole. Don’t try to be cheerful about it.”

Jen sighed. “Look, Peter, I know you didn’t want to come. Everybody knew it. But Dad decided and he couldn’t just have left you behind.”

“He left you.”

“That’s different.”

“Why?” he demanded. “I could have stayed with Aunt Beth and Uncle Ted, too.”

“Then Becky would have been by herself.” A vague, uncomfortable memory stirred in the back of Jen’s mind, part of a conversation between her father and Aunt Beth she had overheard. Aunt Beth was saying, “Well, I really think Jennifer will be fine. After all she is grown-up and sensible. But, David, I wouldn’t know where to begin with Peter. He needs a firm hand obviously, and Ted is so easygoing. Peter needs his father.” David had answered, “All right, you needn’t worry about Peter. I’ll manage. I’m very grateful to you for offering to keep Jen. You’re probably right about her school.” But Jen couldn’t very well tell Peter Aunt Beth hadn’t wanted the responsibility for him.

“. . . you know Becky,” Peter was saying. “She’d be perfectly all right on her own. She’s already got lots of friends.”

“Haven’t you got any?”

Peter gave an unhappy laugh. “Not likely. They’re all too busy with themselves to care about me.”

“Have you tried?” Before he could answer she went on, “I don’t see why you go on fighting it, Peter. Now that you’re actually here, there isn’t much you can do, it seems to me, except give in and make the best of it.”

“Best
of it!” Peter exclaimed heatedly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! Maybe it looks all right to you—you’re only visiting and you can go home in three weeks and forget all the horrible parts. But just for a minute, look at it the way
I
have to—a dead-end town, most of it shut up tight, crumbling away. No decent stores, not even a movie. The closest one’s in Aberystwyth and we hardly ever go there. Aberystwyth isn’t much either, but after you’ve been in Borth for a while it doesn’t look so bad! It rains all the time and it’s cold—you can’t even get warm indoors.”

“What do you do all the time then?” asked Jen, a little shaken by the intensity of this outburst.

Peter glanced at her quickly, then away again. “Not much. Read, or go for walks by myself when it’s dry enough.”

It was hard for Jen to picture her popular, active younger brother wandering around alone or sitting still long enough to read a book. He’d always been the center of activity in Amherst, surrounded by friends his own age, constantly in motion. They were silent for a while, each thinking.

At last Peter said, “I was sure when we got here and saw the house and the town that Dad would come around. He’d have to understand we couldn’t be expected to live here for a whole year in a place without heat in the middle of nowhere. But all he said was that he had a commitment and he didn’t see why we couldn’t manage perfectly well. And every time I open my mouth I get the ‘Of-course-it’s-different-but-we-all
have-to-be-willing-to-adjust’ speech. You’ve heard it. He hasn’t listened to anything anyone’s said to him since—since Mom died.”

“That’s not fair,” Jen protested. “It isn’t easy for him either.”

“But he’s grown-up. He’s responsible for us,” countered Peter. “He’s just made it harder, dumping us here.” He pushed his hand through his coppery hair, making it stand on end, as he always did when he was upset or miserable. “I thought maybe—” He paused.

“What?” Jen thought she knew what was coming.

“Maybe you could talk to him for me. Tell him I can’t stay.”

“How? He won’t send you back by yourself, I know he won’t, and he’s not going to leave in the middle of the year. I think you’re just going to have to make up your mind to stick it out, Peter. It’s only another six months.”

“Six months!” he said bitterly. “And you can go home in three weeks.”

Jen was growing impatient. “Grow up a little, Peter! If he won’t listen to you, Dad’s not going to listen to me, either. I’ll just make him mad at me and that won’t do anyone any good.”

“Then you won’t try?”

“I don’t see how I can,” she snapped.

“All right, then.” Peter’s face hardened, became impassive. “Do what you want, but don’t count on me for anything.” And with that he closed himself off. He might as well have gotten up and left the room, and she could only stare at him in irritated frustration. They said no more to each other, but Peter went off to bed shortly, saying a stiff good-night.

Well, honestly! Jen thought to herself after his door closed. No one can be as difficult as Peter. She was baffled by Peter’s complete refusal to accept a situation he must have realized he couldn’t possibly change. All he did was to make everyone cross and unhappy. Jen was glad Becky seemed to have
decided to stay clear of the arguments, but then she hated family disputes. It was no good trying to stay up any longer, Jen decided, and turned off the kitchen light. There goes our good day.

***

It hadn’t worked. It wasn’t fair. Peter lay awake glaring into the dark, long after he heard his father go upstairs. There was silence in Bryn Celyn, and outside the never-ending noises of wind and surf. So he’d spent the whole day being cooperative—really trying to be pleasant—and it had gotten him nowhere. And he’d come to bed angry without even brushing his teeth: his mouth tasted awful.

He had no idea how long he’d lain there before he was aware of a sound other than those of sea and wind—minutes? Hours? He was suddenly alert, every muscle taut, ready. Ready for what? He waited. The new sound seemed not to come to him from outside, but rather from within himself, and he’d heard or felt it before.

Not at all sure he wanted to, he got cautiously out of bed and tiptoed across to his bureau. The Key lay warm and hard where he had left it among his shirts, and he took it in his hand, looking at it intently. It was no more than a dark shape against his white fingers.

The humming spread around him, growing deeper, fuller, and again he felt the room slide out from under him. The darkness wavered and faded and the sun was warm and gold, afternoon sun. Woodsmoke spiced the air and somewhere among the reeds on the lakeshore a moorhen called “curruc, curruc” in alarm. Peter recognized the island and the group of boys, all about his own age. But this time they stood in an orderly semicircle on top of a small hill, facing a round wooden hut. They were bareheaded, barefoot, wearing loose, bright-colored tunics that reached to their knees and were caught at the waist with belts of tanned leather. They were quiet, their faces expectant and a little apprehensive. All around, the waters of the
lake lay still, reflecting the autumn sky, the forests beyond flushed faintly with color.

Near the doorway of the hut stood a tall, bearded man, his lined, timeless face quiet, his eyes dark and unseeing, quite blind.

Although Peter saw everything as if he were standing on the hill himself, he had no place there. He could only watch unseen without taking part.

There was movement in the hut, and the deerskin that hung across the opening was pushed back. Into the light and air stepped a tall, black-haired woman. Taller even than the blind man, she was slim and proud, her head high. She wore a long, loose-fitting robe of fine woven stuff that shimmered first blue, like the dome of sky, then the green of new grass, then the firey gold of gorsebloom. But it wasn’t the gown that held Peter’s eyes, it was her face. Such a face that it made him unable to look away, even had he wanted. It was perfect and complete; she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, beautiful in a way that frightened him even as he was drawn to her. Without taking his eyes from the woman, Peter knew that all the boys were staring as he was. If none of them saw her again, ever, they would not forget. Without hearing her name, Peter knew it. She was Caridwen.

At her side stood a sturdy, fair-skinned young man whose quizzical blue eyes studied each boy in turn, looking for something. A faint smile touched his mouth. He did not see Peter.

The blind man spoke without moving from his place by the door.

“This is the hour at which one of you will be chosen to go from here with the Bard, Aneirin. He who is chosen is he who has learned from this place all it can teach; but his learning will only have begun. With Aneirin as companion and guide, his thoughts will be shaped by wandering the world until he, too, can be called ‘Bard.’ From among you there is one who is ready for such a beginning.”