Love and War (33 page)

She’s very busy and as usual shrugs off my offer of help – ‘I’ll be longer showing you what to do, girl, than doing it myself’ – so as it’s a warm, cloudless day, blue and gold as far as the eye can see, I decide to walk over the fields to Tregroes; a sentimental journey, I suppose, and foolish too, as my spirits are already low, my heart heavy.

The birds have stopped singing, though the hedges are still full of summer. The last of the honeysuckle has a heavier, more pungent smell than it had a month ago, and the wild roses have grown high into the trees. In the distance, the wheat is a beautiful blushing yellow.

I come to the elementary school I attended until I was eleven, an uncompromising granite building with slate roof and tall narrow windows, overlooking the lovely hills on one side and on the other, the steep valley. Our headmaster was a small frustrated man, unhappy in his marriage, it was said, certainly no longer interested in teaching. He spent long stretches of every day staring out of the windows on the valley side, as though that way lay escape. He was often moved to tears by some incident in a book we’d be reading as a class, he’d bite his lip, blow his nose and sigh, then set us some written exercises and resume his position at the window. He was never unkind. In a community beset by innumerable instances of real poverty, his was, I suppose, the poverty of a life without love. I think of Mary Powell; the poor girl is always in that deep green, gloomy place at the back of my thoughts. ‘Suicide while the balance of the mind was disturbed,’ the inquest said. She would have done well at Cambridge, but it was love she wanted; and lacked. Jack has been dreadfully upset by her death; we’ve seen very little of him in the last few weeks.

A short walk and I’m at the chapel where I was christened and confirmed – and married, too, though I try not to think about that – instructed and bored for many, many hours, where I made up rhymes and stories to pass the time, sang and prayed, day-dreamed about boys, searched the hymn-books for passion and the Bible for dirty verses and occasionally tried to understand something too difficult to understand, about God.

I can remember the first time I was taken to evening service instead of being left at home with my grandmother: my delight at seeing the moon and all the dazzling company of stars when we came out. I suppose I must have been about three then. I can remember, a few years later, the agony of being called forward to the Big Seat to receive some prize or other and wishing hard that I wasn’t so clever.

I look through the tall windows at trees and hills I once knew so well I could draw them from memory. I can still recall in the greatest detail the different bald or balding head of every deacon in the Big Seat. I can still remember vividly the large mild face of the half-idiot man who brought round the collection box, even to the wiry hairs inside his moist red nostrils. I can remember the thorough way the precentor – song-raiser in Welsh – cleared his throat while the organ played the introductory bars of the hymn. I can remember the lovely tenor of the minister’s young son and the trembling contralto of the minister’s wife. I remember looking at my slightly budding chest, wondering if I would ever have a great imposing bosom like hers, which fell away like a ski-slope before her. Chapel three times on a Sunday is guaranteed to turn you into an acute observer if not a Christian. I think I could still reproduce every knot and grain of the pitch-pine of our pew and the one in front. I remember my father’s funeral, the minister’s text ‘And on the column was the work of flowers,’ the chapel crowded to the doors.

I remember my father. I walk over to the churchyard to look at his grave, beautifully cared for by my mother, a bunch of tea-roses spilling their white and yellow petals onto the ugly granite chippings. ‘
John Trefor Lloyd, Buarth, Tregroes. Born 12 January 1892. Died 7 September 1940. A true and faithful servant unto His master.
’ I never liked that inscription, the way it confined him. I wanted something altogether larger: farmer, poet, philosopher and faithful servant unto His master, but my mother considered that over-reaching and vulgar.

I can’t leave without pausing at a weatherbeaten old gravestone at the far end of the churchyard.

In memory of

The children of David and Letita Thomas.

They died as follows:

John. 14 May 1872, aged three years.

Mary Ann, 15 May 1872, aged six years.

David. 16 May 1872, aged five years.

Hewell, 22 May 1872, aged three months.

As usual the starkness of the wording blurs my eyes; no fine Victorian sentiment recording the resignation of David and Letita to the will of God, only cold anger at the fever or famine which had so ravaged their family.
Un dlawd yw fy nghenedl i
. My nation is a poor one.

Gwynn’s village, Nantgoch, ten miles away, is much the same; a small farming community, a chapel society with concerts and singing festivals the highlights of the year, a strange old language, one of the oldest in Europe, binding people to their ancient pre-Christian roots when giants walked the hills and the birds of Rhiannon sang.

I shall find the same sort of people in North Wales, I know that. Though the men work in quarries and the women are tougher and sharper, according to Ilona, they have the same background of chapel and music and books.

All the same, these are
my
acres.

I walk back to the farm through fields of ripening wheat; my mother, like everyone else in these war years, growing cereal crops in little steep fields which have always in the past been laid to pasture.

*

‘I’m not happy about you going away, girl.’

‘I know you’re not, Mam. But try to remember that I’ll be with friends and that I’ve got a decent job and a good salary.’

‘Yes, teaching is a decent sort of job, I’ll grant you that. A good teacher can help and inspire a lot of children, I know that. Education has always been important in this country. But what is a salary but money, and don’t expect me to judge anyone by that standard. Old Benny Brynhir half-starved his men, they say, and he died leaving thousands. Money is nothing but a curse to the ungodly. But I know you didn’t come here for a sermon. And in any case, I have no right to preach to you.’

‘Of course you have. Every right. You’ve always done it and you always shall.’

‘No, no. I’m a sinful woman.’

‘If you’re sinful, Mam, Heaven help the rest of us.’

I look at her fondly, but see at once that she’s trying to tell me something.

‘Fredo managed to get out of that camp last night. He hadn’t been able to come here for almost a fortnight. It was quite late. We were... Oh, I can’t begin to tell you what happened. I can’t believe it myself it was...’

‘You needn’t tell me, Mam. I know what you mean, don’t distress yourself.’

I try to take her hand but she pulls it away. ‘But how can you possibly think it was sinful when you’re going to get married? When you’d have been married already if it were possible.’

‘Oh, that’s the oldest excuse in the world, girl. “We were going to get married.” “We were saving up for a ring.” “We were waiting for a house.” I’m a sinner, Rhian, and so is he.’

‘Mam, you haven’t had time, yet, to get it straight in your mind. Go to chapel tomorrow and think about love and hate, which of them is good and which of them is evil. You and Fredo are harming nobody by your love. Gwynn and I were, I admit that. Our love may have been a sin, it probably was, but only a hypocrite could call your love a sin, and Christ hated hypocrites more than anyone. You know that.’

‘I know the Bible, my girl.’

‘All right. Then tell me where exactly it says that two good, unselfish people who love each other, shouldn’t...’

‘That’s enough, Rhian. There’s no need to go into details... I know what you mean.’

‘Mam, you two are not even committing adultery. Oh, I can surely say that word because it’s in the Bible, Exodus Chapter Twenty. Listen, which commandment have you ever broken?’

‘I’ve coveted a great many things, girl.’

‘Only necessities that we couldn’t afford.’

‘An inside tap, for instance.’

‘An inside tap! Oh, I’ll pray for you. She’s coveted an inside tap. Dear Lord, please –’

‘Don’t Rhian. Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.’

‘I will if it makes you see how foolish you’re being. You’re as good as any mortal being can possibly be. You don’t even have any little sins like being lazy or greedy. You get up before six every morning, you work hard as a beast of burden all day and you give Gino and Martino your sweet ration. You go to chapel at least twice every Sunday and drive us all mad with your old hymns. You live a perfect life. Except... well, perhaps there is one thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘Perhaps He will think you rather ungrateful.’

‘Ungrateful?’

‘You should be thanking Him, I think, for this beautiful, loving Italian He’s sent you.’

‘Rhian!’

‘I’m not going to say any more, I’m not going to preach. But that’s my considered opinion. Ingratitude is a sin. You should be thanking Him: Dear God, from whom all blessings flow.’

‘Well, I don’t know where you get your ideas from, Rhian, I’m sure.’

When I get back to Hill Street, Ilona is lying on the floor with a cushion under her head. ‘I’ve started having this damned baby,’ she says. ‘Oh Rhian, I’m in labour and it’s agony and you must get hold of the midwife. Oh, Jesus. Oh, help.’

My heart thumps against my ribs. ‘Are you sure? You said September. You’ve always said September and it isn’t August yet.’

‘Oh Rhian, I’m frightened. This wasn’t supposed to happen till I got to Brynteg. Oh, God, here’s another bloody pain. I’ve been having them since five. Where the devil have you been? I thought you’d be back on the four o’clock. What happened to you? Where have you been?’

‘I’ll have to get someone to stay with you while I run down to fetch Lydia Owen. What about Mrs Jones, next door?’

‘Oh God no, not Mrs Jones. Rhian, I think I’m dying and I don’t want to die with Mrs Jones. No one should have pain like this. Oh God, I’m swelling up with it – my belly feels like a wardrobe. Tell me what to do.’

I don’t know what to do. She’s gripping my hands so hard that I can feel her pain. Nothing has prepared me for this. I know that quantities of boiling water are needed at a confinement and stacks of newspapers and two or three pudding-basins, but what one does with them I can’t imagine. I’ve never had anything to do with babies. I’ve seen calves being born, but cows are such placid creatures. Even when things get very bad they only stare at their heaving sides and wait.

I manage to free my hands, straightening out my fingers one by one. ‘I won’t be a minute,’ I tell her, ‘Stay where you are a minute.’

I dash out into the road. Arthur Williams, the great lumbering boy whose father is in Swansea jail, was out there earlier, whooping back and forth on his man-sized bicycle.

He’s still there. I shout to him and slowly and apprehensively he comes up the hill towards me.

‘Arthur! Hurry up, Arthur! Can’t you see I’m waiting for you?’

‘What is it, Miss? I’m not doing any harm, Miss.’

‘Do you know Iorwerth Place, Arthur?’

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘Not Iorwerth Terrace but Iorwerth Place.’

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘I want you to take a letter to Mrs Owen in Iorwerth Place. I think it’s the second house after the Red Lion, but you’ll have to ask.’

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘She’s a midwife. You know what that means, don’t you?’

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘It’s my lodger, Arthur. She needs Mrs Owen urgently.’

‘You needn’t write a letter, Miss, I’ll get her for you. “Mrs Evans’s lodger needs Mrs Owen urgently” And I’ll show her the way up here, Miss. You needn’t bother with a letter.’

‘It’s a matter of life or death, Arthur.’

‘Right, Miss.’

He was on his bike and flying down the hill before I’d got back to the door.

‘I’ve sent someone for Lydia Owen. Can you try to get up?’

‘No, of course I can’t.’

‘I’ll help you. I’ll pull you up. She’ll want you on a bed, I’m sure. Anyway you’ll be much more comfortable. That’s it. Oops-a-daisy. That’s better.’

‘She’s not married, I take it,’ Mrs Owen says as she takes off her coat

‘No.’

‘Pity. Not that it makes any difference to this part of things. It’s character that counts in this part.’

Oh Lord, not that, I think to myself as we hear Ilona groaning upstairs.

‘I managed to get her into bed.’

‘Did you put newspapers over the mattress?’

‘Is that what the newspapers are for?’

‘Well, we won’t have much time to read them, girl, will we?’

There’s another awesome groan from Ilona.

‘Mrs Owen, she’s in such pain. It can’t be right.’

‘She’ll be better as soon as she sees me. Old Lydia may not have a pretty face, but...’

‘It’s character that counts.’ I finish her sentence for her, trying to hurry her upstairs.

‘And forty years experience,’ she says. ‘That’s what they see in my face. Forty years of easing babies into this nasty old world.’