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Maudie’s mother went back to her kitchen, picked up Ianto and hugged him. ‘So that’s how it is, my darling,’ she told him. ‘That’s why your mother doesn’t want to get married. Silly girl. She’ll get nothing but misery from Mister Tom because he’s a respectable married man. She’ll get older and less desirable year by year with nothing to show for it but a silly sly look from time to time and a kiss under the mistletoe at Christmas.’

‘Our Maudie’s keen on Mister Tom,’ she told her husband when he came in for dinner. ‘And that’s the reason the wedding’s off.’

‘And who ever gave you that piece of news?’

‘Mister Tom was passing by this morning. He told me nothing but he didn’t have to. It was written all over his face.’

‘Listen to me, girl. Nearly every young married woman has someone she cares for, but he’s out of reach so she marries someone else and forgets him.’

‘So you’re an expert on young married women now are you?’

‘No. But I suppose they’re very like young married men. There’s almost always some impossible dream woman in every young man’s life. Marriage and some damn fine times in bed knocks the nonsense out of them. They find that a good down-to-earth partner is what they really wanted all the time.’

‘Was that how it was for you?’

‘Certainly. I found the right woman and I lived happily with her all my life.’

‘Good,’ Maudie’s mother said, trying not to feel hurt and annoyed.

‘Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you,’ May said when Tom returned from the stable.

‘I should have told you, love. I suddenly felt like doing a bit of horse riding. Poor old Bessie is as solid as a cart horse but I enjoyed being on her back. I wouldn’t dare try a better mount.’

‘Did you speak to anyone?’

‘Only another word or two with Maudie’s mother who was pegging out the washing when I went by.’

‘I think Maudie had a real cheek to go to her aunt’s without getting our permission first. She’s beginning to take advantage of us.’

‘But she knew we’d allow her to go. These old people depend on their relatives to look after them when they’re sick. They can’t afford nurses. Maudie will probably be back quite soon. Apparently the aunt is not expected to live long.’

‘As a matter of fact I’m not at all eager for Maudie to come back here. I was glad she was leaving to get married. I think she forgets her place.’

‘Do you? I’ll have to speak to her about it.’

‘I’ll have to speak to her about it. She seems to think you’re a friend, almost a relative, not her master.’

‘I suppose I rather like that. But I’ll try to change if it bothers you. I’m sure she doesn’t mean to be… overfamiliar.’

‘She knows she has a hold over us because we’re so keen to adopt Ianto.’

‘You’re wrong, May. I don’t want to adopt Ianto. I
wouldn’t feel right to deprive her of her son. Perhaps she won’t have another. We will have our own child if only you are patient.’

‘I don’t think so. We’ve been trying too long by this time. My heart isn’t in it any more. In fact I’d like us to have separate rooms, Tom. I’ve been thinking about it for some time.’

‘May, I’m so sorry. Of course I will do what you want, but I must admit that I feel slighted. Think about Lowri. She’s younger than you are, love, and they’ve been married years longer than we have, but she’s still optimistic that she will have a baby some day.’

‘I think Lowri is mistaken. I’m afraid Josi is too old to father a child now.’

‘He fathered Mari Elen not so long ago.’

‘Anyway, I don’t want to talk about Lowri and Josi. I’m sorry I’m in a bad mood. But I feel slighted by Maudie and I think you’re too fond of her. I don’t mean that in any wicked way, I simply mean that you allow yourself to be too close to servants who, for that reason, take advantage of us.’

Tom got up hurriedly, left the room without further word and angrily retreated to the small high-ceilinged room which had become his studio. There he immediately picked up his palette and his largest brush and, worked-up as he was, resumed the oil painting he was working on, a painting of Hendre Ddu’s old barn. Last week he’d failed to make any headway with it, certain that it wasn’t worth trying to rescue, but suddenly he seemed to know exactly what to do. The technique he adopted was something new and adventurous, great angry brush strokes that reminded him of some of the modern art he’d seen in London, but by managing to over-paint the background it seemed to blend in with the rest of the painting. As a result the barn, which was reputed to be far older than any other part of the house, medieval according to some amateur archaeologists who had once called, took on a sinister, mysterious life as though he were suggesting that it was a place where ill deeds, cock-fighting perhaps, or even murder, had taken place. Working feverishly, he finished off the painting in less than an hour. He stood staring at it, stirred by how powerful it seemed, how raw and direct. Could he really be an artist? He often thought that art was a game he was playing simply because he couldn’t do much else since his injury, but occasionally he was surprised by something he’d produced which seemed real and true. He stared at this completed work, feeling shaken, almost exalted by it, hardly breathing for several moments.

Once, as a small boy, he’d been very ill with pneumonia, his temperature worryingly high, the doctor calling twice a day. One night, when the fever seemed at its highest, he had stirred and smiled at his mother and Nano at his bedside and from that moment had begun to get better. Telling the story, Nano always insisted that she’d felt a wing beat in the room that night. He and Catrin used to tease her about it. Now he thought about that wing beat.

So impressed he was, so grateful for his undoubted talent, that he was able to return in quite a different mood, humbly apologising to May for storming out. He kissed her fondly and she returned his kiss.

It was about three weeks later that Maudie’s mother contacted them to say that her husband’s aunt was dead. ‘And now I’ll have to post Maudie’s black suit to her. I told her to take it, but she thought it would be a bad omen.’

‘So it would,’ Tom said. ‘I’ll take her clothes over to her if you like. I’m not doing anything important at the moment and it will save you the trouble of making up a parcel and taking it to the Post Office at Llanfair.’

That was the outcome Mrs Williams had been hoping for. ‘Would you really Mister Tom? How very kind you are. I’ll bring her things over in a bag this afternoon. And could you please find out when she’s likely to come home. Oh, and tell her, of course, how the little lad has been asking for her.’

As Tom drove, sedately enough, towards the village where Maudie was staying, he felt that he was flying towards her. All the same he knew he would only be able to stay very briefly, because he was determined to behave in a reserved, sensible way, without referring once to her postponed or cancelled wedding or mention how she was missed at Hendre Ddu. How he missed her.

Maud didn’t have the opportunity to rehearse her reaction. When she saw Tom walking up the path to her aunt’s cottage she burst into tears, held out her hands to be comforted, put up her face to be kissed. It was completely natural, unpremeditated and moving, childlike rather than flirtatious. Tom said nothing, only he knew he would remember the moment for the rest of his life.

‘When is the funeral?’ he asked at last in a shaky voice.

‘On Friday. Oh, thank you for bringing me my mourning clothes. I was beginning to think I’d have to wear some old black coat belonging to Aunty Annie.’

‘And when will you get back? Your mother asked me to find out. She says Ianto has been asking for you.’

‘Well, Mister Tom, I’m not quite sure yet whether I will be coming back. Except to pick up all my things. And to get Ianto of course. You see, Aunty Annie has left me this cottage, I didn’t even know she owned it. Now before she was ill, she used to keep a little shop in the front parlour and all the neighbours say I should do the same. You see, there isn’t another shop in this village and people have to walk two miles to the next village. There’s a small school close by for Ianto where he can go when he’s three and it’s supposed to have a good Mistress too. And all the villagers seem so friendly. They’ve already been calling here with little parcels of this and that for the funeral tea. Very neighbourly they seem.’

It was all too much for Tom to take in. ‘Maudie, I think you’re in danger of making a very important decision without enough thought. You really mustn’t behave so impulsively at this point. You must come home and talk these things over with your parents. You may not do so well in the shop, not in the first years anyway. It will be such a gamble, you may lose a lot of money. And you have a good place at Hendre Ddu and might well become the housekeeper before too long.’

‘But, Tom, I wasn’t going to stay at Hendre Ddu in any case. You know that I was intending to leave at the end of the month.’

Tom forgot his decision not to mention the marriage plans ‘Why did you decide not to get married?’ he asked. Even that would have meant he would have seen her from time to time, but here she would be really lost to him. ‘Why?’

She looked at him miserably. ‘You know why,’ she said and again burst into tears.

It was the best thing. As he got back into the car he realised how lucky he was. If she was back at the farm and he open to temptation at every turn, how long would his determination to remain faithful to May be likely to last?

Lucky? He found that tears were coursing down his cheeks so that he could hardly drive. When she had cried and held up her face, he had taken advantage of her innocence and kissed her with mounting passion. If she had doubted his feelings for her, she could doubt no more.

He tried to imprint on his memory the way she’d looked that day (when would he see her again?) though she’d looked just as she always looked. As though her clothes were like the clothes on a statue, there only to emphasise the womanly shape of her body, firm breasts, strong sturdy hips. Her blouse was a faded violet-brown, the colour of ploughed fields in February, her long skirt was the grey of water fowls. Browns and greys. He couldn’t imagine her in bright colours. Her hair was set in a low circle of plaits at the nape of her neck. Nape was a lovely word. How he’d have loved to lift the heaviness of her hair to kiss the nape of her neck. How he’d love to loosen her hair which was the colour of winter bracken, the burnished autumn colours fading to nutmeg brown. He’d remember her for ever, of course he would.

He had refrained from saying ‘I love you’, but wasn’t it implicit in the way he had kissed her and in the way he had been almost unable to break away from her. He groaned again.

Chapter sixteen

One Saturday morning, a week or two later, Tom came across a very woebegone little figure sitting on the old seat in the orchard. ‘Mari Elen, whatever is the matter? Your little face is almost purple. No, stop scrubbing it with your hankie, just look at me and I’ll try to help you. Has Tada been cross with you? Or is someone at school being nasty to you?’

It was a long time before she found enough breath to answer. ‘Oh no, oh no. It’s much worse than that. It’s Lowri. It’s my little mother. She’s… you see she’s very ill… she’s pregnant.’

‘Mari Elen, do you know what being pregnant means?’

‘Yes. It means she’ll have to go to a sanatorium like poor Edwyn Parry and she’ll probably die like he did.’

‘Listen to me, you little silly. I promise you that Lowri is not going to die. I’m not going to tell you what being pregnant means, but I’m going to take you indoors, get you to wash your face and then take you to Lowri and she’ll explain it to you. All right?’

‘All right. Only I heard Tada saying something about her being pregnant and I know she’s being sick in the chamber pot because I can hear her, and when I go in her eyes are all blotchy.’

Tom found Lowri upstairs, arranging piles of sheets and pillowcases in the linen cupboard, explained what had happened, then left them together. Afterwards he went outside to find his father.

Josi must have felt that Tom had something on his mind, so he spoke first.

‘I had such a shock to see your latest painting in the art shop, lad. You made the old barn look exactly as I’ve seen it look dozens of times just before a big storm. That’s one that should go to London surely.’

‘Thanks Nhad. I must say it feels wonderful to know that I really have some talent. At first I thought the art people were being kind because of my war service, but I feel pleasantly self-assured at the moment. At least I have something to feel happy about.’

‘You have your mother’s gift. I always thought she was a very good amateur artist. That posh school she went to rated her very high.’

Josi’s mood suddenly changed, his voice darkening. ‘But there are other things you get from me, lad. No doubt about it.’

It was so direct that Tom, who’d have liked to avoid any confrontation, had no choice but to respond. ‘You know how it is with me then.’

‘I think several people have guessed, but luckily not May. I don’t think she, in her state of purity, could imagine such a thing happening.’

‘But I’m not going to do anything about the way I feel. I haven’t seen her for a month. She didn’t call on us when she came up to fetch Ianto. I still haven’t heard from her. It’s driving me mad, but I’m afraid if I saw her again I wouldn’t be able to resist… wouldn’t be able to resist…’