Dead Man's Embers (2 page)

She turns to look at Davey as she draws Osian through the door into the garden and sees him fling himself flat again onto the floor beneath the table, yelling as he prostrates himself, ‘Down. Whizz-bang coming. Down, Ben, down.'

Osian's scream ends as suddenly as it started once they are through the door and Non lets go of his arm. The garden shimmers already but the sun has not reached into the back of the house yet. There is a foul stench on the air, and Non realises where it is coming from when she sees Maggie Ellis rushing out the closet at the end of her garden, still in her voluminous nightgown and wearing a nightcap on her head. Though what she wants with a nightcap these hot nights is beyond anyone's guess.

Maggie Ellis stops when she catches sight of Osian, and tuts at him. ‘Out in your drawers again, boy?' she says. ‘And was that you screaming, or was it that old crow of yours? Well, never mind. It's your mam I want. Where is she?' She clutches her stomach and moans.

Osian pays her no attention. Non's new found resolution fades a little. Is it not enough that her husband is on his knees under the kitchen table fighting a war that has been over for more than two years? But she walks from the shade into the sunlight. ‘Are you not well, Mrs Ellis?'

‘Not well, Non, not well? Of course I'm not well. Look at
me.' Maggie Ellis clutches her stomach again. ‘It must be something I ate. Everything's going off – the milk's sour, the butter's rancid – and the flies, well, they don't bear thinking about.' She leans over the garden wall, snagging her nightdress on the clambering rose. ‘All night, Non, backwards and forwards to the closet. Do you think you could mix me a little something to stop it?'

Non suspects that Maggie's problems stem from eating too much, her gift that is no gift does not show her any illness in the woman. ‘A cup of strong tea will help bind you, Mrs Ellis. No milk or sugar, mind.' She has lost count of the number of times she has told Maggie Ellis this.

‘Oh, I can't abide my tea black like that, Non. No – you mix me a little something.'

‘You know I've long stopped doing that.'

‘I won't tell Davey, I promise you, Non. It'll be our little secret.' Maggie reaches over the roses to try to pat Non's hand where it rests on the stone wall, and Non hears her nightgown rip on the thorns. It would be so easy to mix a little something for her, but Davey has extracted a promise from her to make no more remedies. Other than her own dark drops, her lifeblood.

‘Make yourself some black tea, Mrs Ellis. It's as good as anything.'

‘Non, Non, we share so many secrets, don't we? And they're perfectly safe with me, don't you worry your pretty head. So one more little one won't hurt, will it?'

Non knows that Maggie Ellis has more to lose than she does from the telling of any secrets. She watches Osian who, in turn, is watching a flock of ravens wheel above him. Is he looking for Herman among them?

Maggie Ellis heaves herself off the roses leaving a shred of her nightgown hanging like a ragged white flag on one of its branches,
and rubs her stomach. ‘I think it's easing, you know. Maybe there won't be any need for me to take anything after all.'

‘That's good,' Non says. ‘Have you run out of ashes for the closet? Some marjoram on the floor would make it pleasanter in there. And a bunch of lavender to hang up.'

‘I'm sure you're quite right, Non. Breathing in that terrible smell can't be doing me any good. I put plenty of ashes down. It's this weather that's to blame. Have you got any whatever-you-said to spare for the floor?'

Non has none to spare, but what is she to do? ‘I'll gather some later,' she says. ‘When the sun has been on it to draw out the oils.'

Maggie Ellis squints at the sky. ‘The sun's not very high yet. What are you doing out here?' She glances from Non to Osian who is now busy whittling a piece of wood, and back again. ‘It was him I heard screeching, wasn't it, not your old crow?'

‘We haven't seen Herman for a few days,' Non says. She shields her eyes with her hand and looks up at the wheeling birds. She cannot see Herman's squared wings and flat-tipped tail. ‘He flies with the ravens sometimes, but I don't think he's up there.'

Maggie Ellis nods at Osian. ‘Is he really safe with that knife?'

‘He's been making things out of wood since he was old enough to handle the knife. You know that, Mrs Ellis. There's no need to worry,' Non says, though she herself finds the sharpness of the knife a mite worrying at times.

‘What I know,' Maggie Ellis says, wagging her finger at Non, ‘what I know is that he's a great worry to dear Mrs Davies. Being odd the way he is.'

It is highly unlikely that her mother-in-law would confide in Maggie Ellis given the remarks Non has heard Mrs Davies make about Maggie. And Non would not have said that her mother-in-law
was worried about Osian, or about anyone else other than herself.

‘And the poor woman has had enough worries,' Maggie Ellis says. ‘More than anyone should.'

Non tries to avoid thinking about Mrs Davies unless it is an absolute necessity, and when she must, she tries to avoid thinking unkind thoughts, because Mrs Davies is a sick woman.

‘That old War's left its mark on us all.' Maggie Ellis beckons Non to come closer and lowers her voice. ‘Poor Elsie Thomas has started having her turns again. Of course, it's the time of year, Non. But this time she's convinced herself that the body they brought back to bury in that big abbey in London is her Benjamin. Wants anyone who'll listen to write to Lloyd George for her and ask him to send Ben home. I told her not to be so silly.'

Poor Elsie, Non thinks. When the letter – no, it had not even been a letter – when the filled-out form came from the War Office, Non read it to her; Elsie could not read English. Died, it had baldly said. Elsie was still waiting for her son's body to come home, she couldn't understand that it never would, that no one came home. No one, Non thinks, not one of them, except that single unknown soldier. Not even Davey.

‘I said to her,' Maggie Ellis says, ‘I said, How can you have a picture of his grave with a cross on it hanging on your wall in that special frame Davey Davies made for it, and still think he's buried in that big place in London? But she's not quite the full yard is she, Non? She never was, that's where Benjamin got it from. It runs in that family, she had a cousin just the same.'

Maggie Ellis drones like the bees, but less productively. Non is too occupied with the thought that has occurred to her to pay Maggie much more attention. She has realised that Davey's waking nightmares have begun at about the same time of year as his nightmares did last year, and the year before, too, she is sure of
it. As if it was somehow all tied up together, which would not be surprising since Davey and Benjamin were in the same section, though Davey said he had not been there when Ben was killed and could not tell Elsie Thomas any more about what had happened than the official form did.

‘Non,' Maggie Ellis's voice cuts in on her thoughts. ‘Non, I said, your Davey's all right now, though, isn't he? Back to normal?'

Non has to suppress a hysterical sob she feels rising in her throat. She sidesteps the question. ‘He's busy with the Festival preparations, Mrs Ellis. Working all hours.'

‘He's lucky to have the work, Non. He's a good carpenter, I'll give you that. I remember him making things from bits of wood when he was younger than your boy there.' Maggie glances at Osian again, narrowing her eyes at him and shaking her head. She would not be the first to wonder where he came from. Non no longer allows herself to wonder.

As she watches Osian's knife shaping the wood, she realises with dismay that she has completely forgotten it is his birthday today. She has been absorbed by the horror of what is happening to Davey inside the house, but it is no excuse. What kind of mother forgets to wish her child a happy birthday?

Seven years, she thinks, since Davey brought him home. Osian was a poor, mewling thing when Davey brought him to her, a newborn, long and red like a newly skinned rabbit. Davey said there was no need to know where he had come from, or who, he was now her child, as if he were somehow making up to her for the fact that she dare not bear a child of her own. Though she had not, then, felt the need for a child of her own. She had wanted to know more about the boy, but all Davey would tell her was that the young mother was dead, she had not told her family who had fathered the baby, and the boy was unwanted. But why had
Davey taken him, she had asked, suspecting that her husband knew more than he was telling her, and he had replied, For you, Non, as if that was the end of the matter. So, she had kept her questions to herself, and named the boy after her own father. To all intents and purposes Osian is hers, and to this day she does not know what to do with him.

She watches him fold his penknife, blow the dust from the wood he has been whittling, and set a tiny carving down on the wall. A perfect miniature soldier.

Maggie Ellis gasps with surprise. ‘It does make you wonder where he gets it from, doesn't it?' she says.

Non had returned to the kitchen to find Davey sitting at the table reading his
Cambrian News
as if nothing had happened. She had sent Osian upstairs to dress himself and hastily wrapped the new shirt she had sewn for him in brown paper.

Now, they are all sitting around the table. No one else has forgotten Osian's birthday. Davey leads the singing of Happy Birthday, which Meg complains is pointless because Osian is not listening. Her father silences her with a look and retreats behind his newspaper.

‘You wouldn't like it if we didn't sing to you on your birthday,' Wil says. He delves into the pocket of the jacket he has slung over the back of his chair and produces an untidily wrapped parcel that he pushes towards his brother, who takes no notice of it.

‘You see?' Meg says. ‘No point.' But she, too, has a small parcel that she gives Non to pass to Osian. ‘I bought my favourite sweets,' she says, ‘so if he can't be bothered to open it, I'll have it back.'

Non places her own parcel next to Osian's breakfast bowl. She looks at him steadily eating his porridge. ‘I'll help you open your presents,' she says, and unwraps Wil's parcel so that the pouch it
contains spills a handful of marbles to roll along the table. Osian stops eating to watch them bounce onto the flagstones. ‘Your prize marbles, Wil,' Non says. ‘Are you sure?'

Wil shrugs. ‘When did I last play with them?' he says, and gets down on his hands and knees to gather them from the floor.

‘Open my parcel for him, Non,' Meg says, and Non does as she is told. Osian immediately begins to sort the jelly babies into rows of different colours and puts a red one into his mouth.

‘I'm afraid he likes them, Meg,' Non says.

Meg frowns and begins to complain that she is too close to the fire, she is too hot, what is the need for a fire on a day when the sun is blazing so hard yet again it is likely to set fire to the whole world. It is a marvel that all the while she scowls in complaint she looks like an angel, her golden hair a halo around her head.

‘To boil the kettle for your cup of tea, Meg, to cook your oats, to heat the washing-up water for your dirty dishes.' Meg would try the patience of a saint, and Non is no saint and her patience is sometimes sorely tried. ‘At least it stays cool in this part of the house in the morning. If you're too hot where you are, change places with me.'

‘I don't want to sit next to him,' Meg says. She grimaces at Osian who would be oblivious to her disdain even if he were not busy eating the red jelly babies one after another.

‘Osian,' Davey says. ‘His name is Osian, Meg.' He turns over a page of his
Cambrian News
, folds the paper in half and leans it against the teapot.

Meg opens her mouth to answer; she always has an answer. Non breaks into the conversation before Meg can further annoy her father. It is difficult most times to know what to make conversation about. Every subject seems to lead to the War, and Non especially does not want that to happen now that Davey has
started having these turns. Turns! she thinks, there must be a better name for what happens to Davey.

‘Maggie Ellis next door was up and down the garden all night to the closet,' she says. Maybe Wil, clinking the marbles back into their pouch one by one, will give one of his impersonations of Maggie. Then she stops; even that could lead to dangerous territory. She puts her hand in her apron pocket to make sure that the soldier Osian carved when they were in the garden, in the space of just a few minutes, is still there and not set down where Davey can be upset by it. She marvels at Osian's skill. Her fingertips trace the tiny details and the smooth finish of what he has made. How does he know what to do to produce such a thing? She cannot recall where or when he first acquired the penknife, he seems to have always had it. She hears again Maggie Ellis asking if he was safe with it, and knows what she meant. Osian is not always predictable.

Wil has not heard her, Non realises. He is smothering a hearty yawn. ‘You stayed out late with Eddie last night, Wil,' she says. ‘Did he have amazing tales of his great adventures on the Seven Seas to tell you?'

Wil rubs his cheeks with vigour, as if to wake himself. ‘He did, Non. The things he's done! It sounds a good life, seeing the world like that. He's been all the way across the Atlantic to Newfoundland and back with only—'

‘That's enough!' Davey bangs his knife down on the table, rattling the cups on their saucers, slopping the tea over their rims. ‘Eddie's no hero, Wil. His father needed him to stay at home after his brother died. Eddie should have done his duty and stayed, not gone gadding about to please himself.'

Duty! What a hard word that is for any of them, let alone a boy of fifteen. Where did it come from? It is not a word the old
Davey would have used, although he, himself, had always been dutiful. Non holds her breath as she sees the look in Wil's eyes, a compound of misery and mulishness.