Dead Man's Embers (3 page)

‘He says he's changing ships, so there's a berth going,' Wil says. ‘On the David Morris. Cook and boy. Sailing out of Port in a few weeks after the repairs are done. Eddie says me being a carpenter should clinch it if I want it.'

Wil has always been the quiet one, the dependable one, too much put on his shoulders that he has carried without a word of complaint. Non is fondest of him by far; Meg is a trial every day.

‘David Morris?' Meg says. ‘That's a funny name for a ship.'

‘I don't want to hear another word about it,' Davey says, not shouting now, his voice even and reasonable as he re-folds his paper and lays it flat on the table.

Wil is not going to stop. ‘I asked Eddie if he'd vouch for me. He says he'll talk to the Master, William Griffiths – he's from Barmouth – some sort of relation to Eddie's father, cousin or something, that's how Eddie got on the ship in the first place.' He looks straight into his father's eyes as he speaks. ‘His father knew all about it, he was happy for Eddie to go, to do what he wanted. He knew Eddie hated farming.'

Davey is barely listening now. He has that look in his eyes that is so often there since he came home, as if he is staring into a distance that they are unaware of, and seeing things they would not recognise even if they saw them.

‘If Wil goes, can I have his bedroom? It'll be too big just for him,' Meg says, glancing at Osian. ‘Osian, I mean,' she adds, giving Davey a sideways look. ‘He can have my little room. He won't care. He doesn't care about anything.' She turns to Osian. ‘I mean, you don't even care it's your birthday, do you?'

‘Wil's not going,' Davey says.

‘He's fifteen, and there is no duty to keep him here,' Non says. ‘He should have some idea of what the world has to offer before he settles down.'

‘I've got to get a move on,' Davey says. ‘I've promised to work on the seating for the Festival this morning. I hope it'll bring better work our way, Wil, more interesting to you than making coffins, anyway.' He gulps his tea. ‘And, Meg – you can help Non make up a bed for your cousin Gwydion. When's he arriving, Non?'

‘He's not really my cousin, though, is he?' Meg says, before Non can answer. ‘He belongs to Non's family, not ours.'

Non suspects that her mother-in-law has had much to do with Meg's education on family matters. ‘He should be here before dinner time,' she says.

‘He's travelled, hasn't he, Non?' Wil says. ‘Gwydion?'

‘Not as far as Newfoundland,' Non says. ‘He was in Brittany last summer with some university friends.' She turns to Meg and adds, ‘Next door to France.'

‘I know that,' Meg says. ‘I'd like to go to France. I already know a lot of French words – je parle français un petit peu – and Mademoiselle Green says I'm her best student and she'll lend me some French novels over the summer. And she says that if we had any relatives in France during the War we should ask them to teach us some of the French they learnt. What did you learn when you were there, Tada?'

Davey puts his palms on the table and lifts himself up out of his chair. ‘Nothing of use to you,' he says to Meg. ‘What can your Mademoiselle Green know of words men learnt when they were fighting?'

‘Her brother was a captain in the—' Meg stops when she sees the look on her father's face.

‘An officer, then,' Davey says. ‘Well, that would be different, wouldn't it?'

Meg frowns down at her plate. She's not sure what to read into this, Non thinks. Non is not altogether sure herself.

Davey pushes his chair under the table. ‘I know it's Saturday, Wil,' he says, ‘but I could do with a hand on this job, just for the morning.'

As Davey walks away from the table, Osian stands up, his chair skittering back along the flagstones, and holds his hands up to stop his father without actually touching him. Osian plunges his hands into Non's apron pockets and, before she realises what he is trying to do, pulls out the soldier he carved and puts it on the table.

Davey's face darkens and he grabs the figure from the tablecloth and throws it into the fire where it immediately begins to smoulder. ‘Cannon fodder,' he says in a conversational tone. ‘Cannon fodder, little Osian. We'll have no more of them.'

No one moves as Davey heads for the door. Non surveys her children's faces. Meg looks astonished, Wil despairing, and Osian has no expression at all.

Wil leaves the house, wearing his workclothes, a few moments after his father's dramatic departure.

Non catches his hand. ‘You follow your heart's desire, Wil,' she says.

He turns and hugs her, not something he does often; the Davieses are not a demonstrative family. ‘I'll miss you, Non,' he says.

She remembers her father frequently giving her the advice she has just given Wil. Follow your heart, Rhiannon, he would tell her, it is the only way to live. And each time he would tell her the story, with only the slightest variations between one telling and the next, of how he had followed his heart's desire to carry on in the traditions of his mother's family, which in medieval times had been hailed as one of the great families in the use of herbal remedies, who could and would cure anyone, from paupers to princes, with their secret recipes. But his father had wanted him to pursue a career in the law and when he refused had cast him adrift without a penny. My own father, Rhiannon, he would cry, and then hug her so tightly that all the breath was knocked out of her. And then he would tell her the story, her favourite
story, of how he had seen her mother for the first time and fallen passionately and helplessly in love with her before she had as much as uttered one word to him. She, too, he would say, was my heart's desire. So, follow your heart, my child, and everything else will follow that.

‘Go,' Non now says to Wil, and he walks out into the sunshine, a man already, a man with a mind of his own, not the boy she had taken on in the blitheness of youth and the headiness of love when she was following her own heart's desire.

She turns away from the door to find Osian hovering behind her, her shadow child. ‘You stay with me today, Osh,' she says. He gives her his usual blank look. ‘Your big cousin Gwydion is coming to stay. You like him, remember?' After seven years it is still difficult for her to remember not to touch Osian. When he knocks against an inanimate object he hardly notices it. It is people he objects to. But she can hardly blame him for that; there are times when she finds people hard to contend with.

She sidesteps past him and into the kitchen where Meg is still sipping at a cup of tea that must surely be stone cold by now even in this heat. ‘Help me clear away, Meg,' she says, and begins to stack their plates and cutlery. ‘Then perhaps you can gather some raspberries for later.'

‘Nain says that kind of thing is for servants to do,' Meg says. ‘And she says I'm not your servant.'

Non takes a long, deep breath. Count to twenty, Non, she hears her sister counselling her. One, two, three . . . She will not become embroiled in an argument with Meg about the folly of some of Mrs Davies's teachings.

‘That's all well and fine if you have servants to do the work, but we don't, so come on, Meg.'

‘You have Lizzie German to help with the washing,' Meg says.

‘That's different, and you know it. And she's Mrs Grunwald to you.' Non ignores Meg's huffing. ‘Now, Gwydion will be here soon, and we need to get these breakfast things cleared away and his bed made up before he arrives.'

‘When's his train?' It is almost a year since Meg last saw Gwydion, when she had conceived a girlish passion for him; a passion that may not have entirely vanished judging from her heightened colour.

‘He wrote that he'd be here for his dinner,' Non says, ‘but I'm not sure which train he'll be on. He knows his way from the station by now, Meg, so we'll have to expect him when we see him.'

She leaves Meg to finish clearing the table and wash the dishes, and goes upstairs to make the beds and empty the slops. Saturday's housework is usually done by dinner time, and she will have time to spend with Gwydion this afternoon. She pauses as her hands smooth the sheet on her bed – her bed! – it is Davey's bed, too. How she longs for the intimacy they shared before Davey joined the fighting. She lifts the bedcover from the floor and throws it across the bed where it billows before it drops into place. The War returned Davey, one of the few, and for that she is grateful, but the War seems to have returned the wrong man to her. He looks enough like Davey, he speaks enough like Davey, he even behaves enough like Davey that most people assume he has not changed. But it is all an act; this man who now lives with her is a stranger.

Sorrow overcomes her and she sits on the bed, her face cupped in her hands. The memory of his return hurts as if it happened yesterday. She remembers the tentative knock on the door and how she had opened it to find Davey standing there as if he had no right to enter his own house. She had not expected him, no
one had news of when their men were coming home, they came when they came. She had gasped his name, then did not know what to say to him, what to do. Davey had walked into the house, Non retreating before him. And as if he had been practising the lines, he said, I'm glad to be home, Non, but there is something I must tell you. He had paused as if he needed prompting, given a slight start, then continued, I have to tell you that although I will look after you and the children, because that is my duty, we cannot be as we were. She remembers wanting to laugh, swallowing the hysteria that had risen in her throat. Cannot be as we were? she had said, the first words other than his name that she had uttered to the husband she had not seen for years. I am not fit to be your husband, Davey had said, I have fallen in love with another woman and been untrue to you. She remembers staring at him in disbelief. Where were there other women to meet on the battle-field? – that was the first thought that had come to her mind. Who? was all she could think to ask. A nurse, he had replied. Non had wanted to know her name, and still wishes she had never asked. Was not Angela exactly the name of the kind of woman a man might prefer to plain old Non?

She smoothes the bedcover, tugging it slightly to straighten its lines. She wishes she had cried, screamed, pleaded, said it did not matter to her. But she had not. She had possessed secrets of her own by then and had realised as soon as she saw Davey on the doorstep that she had very nearly made a mistake of her own, too, and had no right to plead. Would their lives be different now if she had behaved differently then? It is a question that has haunted her.

And so it had been. Sharing a bed because there was no other place for Davey to sleep. Sharing a house, sharing the children, sharing their lives. But not sharing a marriage any more, not
sharing conversation and laughter, their hopes and dreams, their fears. She grieves for her Davey, who had loved her, and who she had loved in return, she grieves for him as if he were dead. More than if he were dead. She may have decided that she will not be defeated by the mystery of what haunts this Davey, by the puzzle of what he has become, but she has no idea how to begin to fight back, how to begin to find the Davey who loved her.

She lifts her head; her work will never be done while she sits here and mopes. She pushes herself up from the bed and finishes straightening the bedcover. From the linen cupboard on the landing she draws out sheets and pillowcases to make a bed up for Gwydion. She buries her nose in the sheets; last year's dried lavender still scents them and the cotton is crisp on her cheeks. She takes the bedding into the boys' room, and wonders, as she does every morning, how the two of them can breathe in here, never mind sleep. Wil says that Osian is afraid of some unknown beast climbing through the open window, though how Osian has told him this is something of a mystery to Non. Sometimes, she wonders if the fear is Wil's. It will be a bit of a squash for three in here, she thinks, then remembers that Wil may not be home for very much longer, and will not mind a bit of a squash anyway, Wil being Wil. She has no idea what Osian will think of it. Gwydion is rather old to be sharing with the younger boys but it was his idea to find work here during his university vacation and invite himself to stay, so he ought not to mind too much. He is probably used to sleeping in all kinds of places, student that he is. She unrolls the mattress that stays under Wil's bed when not in use and makes it up into a comfortable bed for Gwydion. She resists the strong temptation that assails her to lie down on it for five minutes – what would Mrs Davies say! – tidies Wil and Osian's beds, and decides to open the window wide, beast or no beast.

Non stands still by the window to watch Meg gathering raspberries, eating as many of them as she puts in the bowl, and between each bite humming more tunefully than the bees working the roses outside the boys' window. The faint and comforting clucking of the hens reaches Non from the farthest part of the garden as they scratch for titbits before the heat drives them to lie almost comatose in the shade of the shrubs. The heat already mutes the sounds of conversations from neighbouring houses and the snatches of song finished almost before they are started because the effort is too much. The heat lies like the hush of a Sunday over everything.

Meg startles Non when she leaps up from the raspberry canes as if she has been stung, a mere second before a roar comes from the front of the house that seems to shake the walls. Fear makes Non's heart pound: should she take some of her drops? No time. Instead she runs down the stairs and out through the front door to find a gaggle of children crowded around a monstrous black motorcycle with what appears to be an airman on its back straight from the pictures she has seen of the Sopwith Camels during the War – though she was never able to imagine such graceless machines flying like birds. But the War is long over, it cannot be anything to do with the War.