Dead Man's Embers (15 page)

From the distance, muted by the heat, Non can hear other people's lives going on, a snatch of song, conversation, laughter. No one has a right to take these things away from people. Maggie Ellis has no right to threaten to take away Betty's happiness. The girl is now married and expecting her first child, and has a smile on her face whenever Non sees her. And Non has no right to say what she is about to say to Maggie Ellis, but needs must. ‘I've been meaning to ask you, Mrs Ellis, if you've had a recurrence of that . . . little problem you told me Mr Ellis passed on to you when he came back from Manchester that time. It's not easily curable with herbal preparations, you know, you may need to visit Dr Jones to get something a bit stronger.' Non is speaking in a conversational tone, and has not raised her voice, but Maggie Ellis starts to bob up and down behind the garden wall, her ridiculous hat making her look as if she is about to take flight.

‘Shhh, Non, shhh. That was in complete confidence. You promised, Non. And I'm absolutely fine and so is Mr Ellis. And he never bothers me now. There's no need to mention it again.'

Non stares back at her. She feels a little guilty at the agitation she is causing. But, she reminds herself, Betty's treatment had also been in complete confidence. Except that confidentiality had been
difficult – impossible – with Maggie Ellis twitching her curtain every time anyone came to ask for help.

‘You see, Non, I promised Mary I'd ask you,' Maggie Ellis says, holding one imploring hand out over the rambling rose to Non, and clutching her bosom with the other. ‘She's frantic about the silly girl. Got herself sweet-talked by some door-to-door salesman – did you ever hear of such a thing? – and it turns out he's got a wife and family Bangor way. I said I'd ask.' She looks sorrowfully at Non. ‘I wouldn't say anything to anyone about Annie's daughter. Oh . . .' and she clutches her bosom with both hands, ‘oh, you didn't really think that, Non?'

Non takes the cloth that covers the raspberry leaves and gathers some of the mugwort that has grown again abundantly despite Davey's attempts at eradicating it, and wraps it in the cloth and gives the bundle to Maggie Ellis. ‘Tell your sister to boil these and have her daughter drink the water,' she says. ‘That's all I can do for you.'

Maggie Ellis takes the bundle gingerly, as if it contains something distasteful. ‘But, Non, can't you do that—' she begins. When she sees Non's face she scurries away, her hat bobbing and swaying until it becomes entangled with the purple flowers of the potato vine around her back door as she pushes her way into her house.

She is in a foreign country. And yet it doesn't look so very different from her own country. She had made an irreversible move into this other world when she stepped onto the platform at Whitchurch to take the train to Crewe, and thence to London.

In physical terms her journey from Aberystwyth had been uneventful. Her seat was comfortable enough, the heat not too unbearable with both windows let down to draw some sort of breeze through, even if it did carry smuts and smells from the engine's steam and smoke with it. Other passengers joined her and left her, and the stations at which the train stopped became countless. But she sat by the window with
Jane Eyre
open, and unread, on her lap; neither did the changing scenery catch her interest: her mind was too full of what she hoped to find in London.

She had felt a slight frisson of anxiety as the train drew into Abermule and she remembered the photographs of the terrible accident there earlier in the year, which she had seen in the
Cambrian News
, but no one else seemed to be thinking of the tragedy as they chattered and laughed their way past. Her compartment had a whole family in it at that point travelling to
Welshpool, a boisterous all-boy family apart from one small and dainty girl with a huge bow of white ribbon in her hair and who, Non could see, was not going to live long. She had turned away from them all in her distress and gazed sightlessly through the window as the train rattled and swayed its way along the tracks.

When she changed trains at Crewe, the thing she noticed most, apart from the larger engine drawing the train and the plusher compartment in which she sat, was the language. Everyone spoke English, no one spoke Welsh.

She was seven when her father had taken her with him on a trip to Liverpool where he was visiting a colleague recently arrived back from a voyage to some distant country – she never understood where – with plants he thought might interest her father. It had astounded her to hear all the children she saw in the city playing and singing and speaking in English. Though her father had taught her to read the language, she stumbled over speaking it, and most of the children she knew at home spoke little English and read even less, despite being punished at school for speaking Welsh. It is because we are in England, Rhiannon, her father had patiently explained to her, it is a different country with a different language.

Her father had been used to receiving many visitors from around the globe, visitors who had usually spent time aboard a ship to reach him. Until she travelled to Liverpool Non had always assumed she would have to cross the sea to visit a country where a language other than her own was spoken. She wonders, now, what those visitors had made of their home and their language; maybe they were not particularly aware of their surroundings, for they lived a life of the mind. But to her, today, it is strange not to hear a single word spoken in her own language. A foreign country. What will she find there?

She is glad to have brought a basket of food with her from her sister's house. She had invented an excuse, saying that she might stop in Machynlleth to walk around and catch a later train to continue her journey. It is a little worrying, the ease with which she lies. She delves into the basket for a chunk of the bread she packed and a piece of cheese she wrapped in damp muslin to keep it from sweating in the heat. The train she is on now is much hotter than the one she changed from, the little country train; she feels a pang of longing for it. These compartments are crammed with people, she had difficulty finding a place to sit, until a young man, still in uniform, gave up his window seat for her. People are even sitting in the corridors, she has seen them squatting on their bags and cases. She wonders why the railway company does not provide another carriage.

She is ravenous the moment she begins to eat the bread and cheese; breakfast at Branwen's house was a long time ago. She does not possess a watch, but she thinks she must be over halfway by now, so that is, say, four and a half hours or so after the train set off at half-past nine. It must be about two o'clock by now. The sun is still high in the sky, beating relentlessly down on the metal roofs of the carriages, but at least not blazing in through the window, which she really does not think she could bear. No one has spoken to her since the train left Crewe, not even a Good afternoon, though she has smiled and nodded at the other occupants of the carriage as they arrive and leave. She worries that perhaps the English are not a friendly people. What if Angela is not friendly, not forthcoming? But her letter had been friendly enough, short and to the point, to be sure, but friendly.

It is with some dismay she notices that the clothes she wears are not as fashionable as those that most of the younger women who are travelling wear. So much of their legs showing; she would
be the talk of the town if she dressed like that. But the freedom of not having to wear skirts down to her ankles appeals to her; she may shorten her skirts just a little when she returns home. She looks surreptitiously at two women about her age sitting diagonally across from her and sighs. It is not just skirt length – it is shoes, it is collars, and more than anything, it is hairstyle. She hopes she will not appear to be old-fashioned, she would not like Angela to think she is old-fashioned in her ways and her thinking just because of her clothes.

She is being frivolous when she has matters to consider that are too serious for frivolity. She does not need to take Angela's letter from her bag, she knows the words in it off by heart. And she had sent, this morning before catching the train, a telegram from the Post Office at Aberystwyth to let Angela know the time the train would pull into Euston. It was the only way to announce her imminent arrival. Everything needed doing in such a hurry, the time at her disposal was rapidly vanishing, and her sister and niece would soon genuinely need her help at the birth.

She sips lemonade from the bottle her sister has pressed upon her, her sister who thought she was returning home until she was needed again. The drink is refreshing and the sweetness will give her back some of the energy the journey is dissipating. Non pushes away the feelings of guilt that assail her. She will not allow herself to think of what may be happening to Davey in the early mornings when she is not there. She is deceiving him and everyone else for a very good reason. She is not sure how she will explain to him what, she hopes, she is about to find out from a conversation with Angela, but she will have plenty of time to think about that on her journey home.

The wheels sing over the rails in their familiar way. Non is glad of the window seat. At least now and then she is able to press
her forehead against the coolness of the glass and watch the fields, the villages, the towns flash past, but they flash past so much more quickly than she is used to that it is difficult to capture their images. It makes her dizzy and she has to look away again. The carriage passes into shade as dark as the inside of a tunnel and then into sunshine so piercing that it makes her eyes ache. She closes them, she is already weary. The heat does not suit her, the press of people does not suit her. At home, everyone she knows has been complaining of the relentless heat. Will it ever cease?

She has no idea what she expects Angela to be able to tell her. She is placing all her hopes on Angela, and that is probably wrong. It may be that Angela will not be able to help, that she meant precisely what she said in her letter. Non is suddenly not at all sure how well Angela knows Davey. She had nursed him for a long time according to the story Davey had told Non, but that might be as untrue as his story of an affair with Angela. The last line of Angela's letter to Davey had been,
You must stop this nonsense; it is insulting to me
. Non is not comfortable with leaving so much to chance but cannot see what else she can do. She has to feel her way through this, much as blind old Aggie Hughes who lives next door to Lizzie German, has to feel her way around her house. Is she foolish to be doing this at all? It occurs to her that other people may not go to these extremes. Branwen would accuse her of being headstrong. She is uncomfortably aware that she is taking herself away from all she knows to journey towards something – a place? a people? a revelation? – that is utterly unknown to her.

The train has slowed its journeying. She watches buildings glide by, growing taller and blacker, and suddenly the train enters a cavernous building with a roof made of glass and grime through which light struggles to enter; it is some kind of netherworld, full
of smoke and steam, clatter and hissing and whistling, and over it all human voices clamour and call. Euston. She presses back into her seat as the other passengers stand up and walk into the corridor or take bags down from the overhead netting. She hears the cries of the guard as the train slows to a halt and people scramble and spill out of the train doors, pushing past one another. Non gathers her handbag and carpet bag together and makes her way down the step, over the gap full of rising steam, onto the station platform.

People race past and away from her. How will she know Angela? A surge of panic makes her heart beat so fast she becomes breathless. She had better wait until most people have gone so that she can see who else is on the platform. And so she does. It does not take many minutes. Out of the misty smoke and steam a figure comes towards her. Non is puzzled by the familiarity of the form and face she sees. And then she realises, and she gasps, ‘Grace!'

Angela's room is cosy. Poky would be an unkind word for it, though it is a smaller home than any Non has ever seen. But it is . . . modern, she supposes. She is having difficulty in reconciling the two ideas of pokiness and modernity; they seem to be the anti thesis of one another. Angela herself is negotiating for the use of the landlady's spare bedroom for two nights, having ascertained that Non is able to pay for it.

Non is still perturbed by Angela's likeness to Grace. As Angela had raced her away from Euston, walking faster than Non was used to, under a gigantic archway with gates of black and gold and immense pillars, along streets crowded with people and traffic, through swirling dust from wheels and hooves, beneath the looming presence of houses blackened by soot and smoke that seemed taller than the castle at home, until they stopped at this shabby house in William Road, Non had sneaked glances at her profile. What can it mean, this likeness?

She puts her carpet bag and handbag on the floor and surveys the room more closely. Angela had opened the sash window wide the moment they came in, but it has made little difference to the
temperature. The small table with two kitchen chairs tucked under it by the window holds what looks like a Bible. She does not like to pick it up and leaf through it, her usual response to any kind of book she comes across; it seems ill-mannered here. There is an armchair with a blanket thrown over it next to the fireplace. And in the fireplace a contraption that takes the place of a fire, possibly, though she cannot see how it will work. Along the wall opposite the window is a narrow bed, with cushions on it that are intended to make it look like a couch, but do not really disguise its true nature. And at the foot of the bed is an alcove with a curtain drawn across it; maybe a wardrobe, or shelves. There is nowhere to wash or cook, though Angela had mentioned that she has only the one room. Rents are outrageous, she had said. There is not much comfort here, Non thinks, seeing her own home in her mind's eye, not for the body or the soul. Though some might count the Bible.