The House of Women (18 page)

4

Until he was out of the city’s convoluted one-way systems, McKenna treated the car with reserve, assessing its strengths and idiosyncrasies, but at the bottom of Port Dinorwic bypass, he let it go. Air currents snatching his hair, the whine of a slipstream in his ears, and the speedometer needle quivering on the hundred mark, he rocketed past other traffic on the wide, curving hill, grinning from ear to ear.

Here and there along the Porthmadog road, the sun raised shimmering heat mirages, and seared the top of his head and his arms while he waited behind a queue of trippers to pay the toll on the Cob, beyond which all that remained of Klondike explosives factory were a few deep wounds in a hillsi
de strewn with slivers of corrugated iron. He stopped for lunch just east of Penrhyndeudraeth, eating in a garden shaded by banks of glorious hydrangeas, above a dusty road meandering through the river-cut valley floor. Bees hummed around him from flowercup to flowercup, while a lone wasp stalked the girl at a neighbouring table, as she flirted with her boyfriend, oblivious to danger. Ripe and summery and almost overblown, she reminded him of Mina, and he thought of the time when the heat would desert her relationship, leaving her to face winter alone.

On the road once more, the cubic concrete edifice of Trawsfynydd power station rose ahead, gleaming on the edge of a dark lake so contaminated, some said, that the fish from its depths were monstrous. Fields and sheep folds and dour granite buildings slipped by
behind low stone walls and clipped hedgerows, a collage of land speckled with thousands of sheep. Denuded of fleece, they grazed pastures grown lush on spring rains and toxic caesium, the legacy of another power station thousands of miles to the east, which, like the last testament of Ned’s father, might never be exhausted.

Turning for the Bala road, he drove through sparse forestry plantations and a tide-like wilderness of molten earth set into slopes and cones and bleak unstable escarpments, while above him, a red kite flirted with the sun, swooping and soaring and dazzling. The car cut a swath in the hot still air, while a little breeze, scented with the tang of pine, stirred off the peaks and ruffled the meagre waters of Llyn Celyn reservoir, rustling through the wind-tangled scrub around the shoreline. He slowed to take the hairpin bend which dragged the road around the flank of the mountain, looking for the ruins of submerged hamlets and railway line, then accelerated once more, passing the dam holed decades before by guerrilla soldiers of the Free Welsh Army. The light hurt his eyes, the sun burned through his shirt, and the hot draughts swirling inside the car parched his skin and filled his nose with the lingering stench of the charnel house. He saw the cattle incinerator from the corner of his eye, a blackened ramshackle building up a dirt track behind a copse, greasy smoke befouling walls and fences, and black soot stuck to the leaves.

Bala’s streets were choked with tourists and cars, and he fretted behind a stream of slow-moving traffic, overwhelmed by smells of frying food and exhaust fumes, before leaving the town behind for the gentler wooded hills to the east, and the tall Celtic cross, wreathed for remembrance with brilliant red silk poppies, which marked the junction for Penglogfa.

The village was a tiny place of old cob and stone cottages and tapering lanes, with a church at its heart like the hub on the wheel of life. Lavish pink and white and purple fuchsias dripped over garden walls, and dropped their blossoms in the road beneath his tyres. He and his car attracted attention, women who turned from their gossip to look, children who gathered in small groups and followed him at a run, and old men, who simply watched, shaking their heads, and he thought they probably knew who he was and why he had come, by that ancient process which carried knowledge as the eagle rode the wind from mountain to mountain.

Fortress-like behind a high stone wall, Llys Ifor straddled the side of a hill at the end of a lane built for horse-traffic, and barely wide enough for a car. Untrimmed bushes and small trees slapped their branches against the windscreen, dragged over the fairings and brushed his head and shoulders, leaving shards of leaf and blossom and another perfume on his clothes. He drove through an arch in the wall and parked in the courtyard beside a smart blue hatchback with a teddy bear strapped in the driving seat.

For all its size, the house was a simple structure of four walls and a roof in the tradition of Welsh vernacular architecture, devoid of embellishment apart from a heavy string course at first floor level, and high chimneys at either end, corbelled out from the walls, where a drift of grey smoke hung over the one to his right. Angled architraves surmounted the door and window openings, set deep into walls built with boulders from the mountains.

Annie appeared in the courtyard, dressed in jeans and a pale silk shirt. ‘Phoebe rang to tell us you were on your way.’ She smiled. ‘And that you’d borrowed Dewi’s car. Which way did you come?’

‘
Through Porthmadog.’

‘
It’s quicker through Corwen,’ she said, escorting him into the kitchen, ‘but not quite so scenic.’

The room was massive, and filled with ancient shadows, plastered walls dark with age and smoke, great slabs of blue-veined slate on the floor, the ceiling criss-crossed with beams of black oak. The wall to the right was almost filled with an enormous hearth, where a fire crackled and glowed, and he doubted if room or fittings had changed since the day the house was built.

‘It’s a listed building,’ Annie told him, ‘and it’s falling into ruin because Gladys can’t afford the upkeep. She lives in a few rooms, and the rest are empty.’

‘
How old is it?’

‘
Mostly late fifteenth century, but some of the outbuildings are older, and the land deeds go back to 1257.’ She took a stone crock from an alcove in the wall, and filled a glass jug with lemonade, setting out jug and tumblers on a tray. ‘Henry III granted the title to an Ifor Hael, no doubt for services rendered.’

‘
It would make a wonderful guest house,’ McKenna said, watching her. ‘Gladys could make a fortune.’

‘
I expect she could, but that wouldn’t be practical.’ She picked up the tray, and made for a low, wide door set in a wall feet thick.

‘
Where’s Bethan?’ he asked, holding open the door, and feeling the age of the wood beneath his fingers.

‘
As on every other visit, rain or shine, she’s having a riding lesson with Meirion. He and his cronies help Gladys with the stock.’

He followed her along a slate-floored passage bisecting the house, and through another low door into a parlour brilliant with the sunshine of an August afternoon.

Perched on a long oak settle, feet crossed at the ankle, fire-tartan criss-crossing her lower legs, and a pinchbeck brooch at the neck of her dress, Gladys Jones looked like a wrinkled Phoebe, dressed in black. She smiled and gestured like Phoebe, her eyes were the same slaty-blue, and she had the same expression about her. As she shook McKenna’s hand, she nodded towards the mess of a human being bundled up in shapeless dark garments, asleep in a tattered wing chair beside a hearth filled with apple logs. ‘This is our sister, Gertrude,’ she said. ‘She’s quite deaf.’

‘
And almost blind, and dumb of speech,’ added Annie. ‘But she still keens and moans, especially when the moon’s full.’

‘
Hush, child!’ Gladys chided, inviting McKenna to sit beside her.

Annie handed him a tumbler of lemonade, the glass beaded with dew, then like Gladys, watched him in silence, weighing him as a person, seeking changes wrought by a changed environment. A Jacobean brass clock ticked crankily on a mantel festooned with dusty black mourning, birds rustled and chirped in the trees beyond the open windows, and the deaf woman whuffled like a sleeping animal. He heard sheep bleating in the distance, then nearer, the bark of a dog and Bethan
’s laughter, and wondered if memory and sense might still flicker in the mind of the decayed woman in the fireside chair. ‘What’s wrong with your sister?’ he asked Gladys.

‘
Old age,’ the old woman began.

‘
Ignorance and stupidity,’ Annie interrupted.

‘
Gertrude’s seventy-eight, I’m seventy-one. Old age is bound to get us, but Annie won’t have it.’

‘
She’s been like this as long as I can remember.’

‘
Annie’s convinced Gertrude’s afflicted with mad cow disease, but I’ve told her she was never quite right in the head, even as a girl.’ Gladys smiled gently. ‘We’re all a little strange, as I expect you’ve realized. Edith thinks the isolation turns our minds. Is it true she’s thrown away her tablets? She’ll be like a one-legged man without his crutch.’

Gertrude twitched violently, rocking her chair, then began to snore, dribble trickling from her half-open mouth. Annie wiped the crazed skin with a napkin, then tucked the cloth under Gertrude
’s chin.

‘
She’s very foolish to stop taking her tablets so suddenly,’ Gladys went on. ‘But then, she’s a foolish woman in many ways, and she’s made some very stupid mistakes in the past, and suffered for them, but she wouldn’t hurt Ned, even though they never liked each other very much.’ She paused, watching him, then said: ‘She wouldn’t let anyone else hurt him, either.’

‘
She’s said Ned didn’t have an enemy in the world,’ commented McKenna.

‘
That didn’t stop you arresting George,’ Annie commented.

‘
We had no choice,’ McKenna said. ‘Ned’s SOS bracelet was found in his flat.’

‘
After someone made sure you searched it.’

‘
That may well be, but we still had no choice.’

‘
Ned wrote about George quite often,’ Gladys said. ‘I hoped to meet him one day. He sounds a decent young man. Phoebe likes him too. She said I should tell you to let him go, but I told her she’d have to wait on the fullness of time.’

‘
Time often needs help,’ Annie interjected.

‘
So Phoebe reminded me.’ Gladys nodded. ‘Mind you, she’d like to run the world, or at least, her small part of it. She wants me to go to Bangor, but there’s not really much point, because we’ll bring Ned back to be with the rest of the family in the chapel yard. Did you know our great grandfather laid the chapel foundation stone in 1854?’ she asked McKenna. Then grief clouded her eyes and etched deep lines about her mouth. ‘When can Ned come home? When can we bury him?’

‘
We’re waiting for the inquest date.’

‘
Why?’ Annie asked. ‘There’s no mystery about his dying.’

‘
There might be argument,’ McKenna said.

Gladys rose.
‘I’ll make tea.’ She patted her sister’s withered hands, then trotted to the door, remarkably spry for her years. ‘Show Mr McKenna the farm,’ she added, ‘and after tea, he can look at the photo albums.’

‘
Auntie Gladys virtually reared Ned, you know,’ Annie said. ‘She’s taken it hard.’

She led him through another low door into a flagged hallway from which a wide stone staircase, treads worn hollow in the middle, led to the upper floor. A drying, cloying smell filled the air.

‘I can smell dry rot,’ he said.

‘
There’d be something wrong with your nose if you couldn’t,’ she retorted, dragging open the front door. Cut from black oak, studded, banded and hinged with iron, its bottom corner screeched along the stone, and a shower of coins dark with verdigris fell about their feet. ‘Auntie Gladys puts coins over the front door every New Year’s Eve,’ she said, stooping to retrieve them, ‘and she’ll be long cold in her grave before they bring any good fortune to this house.’

‘
Why can’t she sell up, or hand it to the National Trust?’

‘
Because the will says it must stay in the family, and she can’t risk the legal costs of asking for a variation in the terms. A court wouldn’t necessarily rule in her favour, however reasonable the request.’ Leaving the door ajar, she went outside. ‘And she can’t afford her contribution to a restoration grant. She barely keeps body and soul together as it is.’

Unmown lawns of yellowed weedy grass fronted the building, bordered with unclipped hedges and shrubs. Looking back at the dark house, its windows ablaze with the light of the westering sun, he said:
‘Ruination of a place like this would be tragic.’

‘
Ned thought it was poetic justice.’

‘
I know. George told me.’

‘
You can’t really believe he killed Ned.’

‘
I can’t discuss the matter.’

‘
Mama said you can be patronizing, and so did Phoebe. We have a vested interest, you know.’

‘
That’s the problem.’ McKenna’s bare arm was almost brushing hers. ‘I think George was very crudely fitted up, which leaves the real killer still on the loose, and it could be any one of you.’

‘
I’ve already told you it wasn’t me, but I can’t prove it, and I’ve already told you that.’

A flight of crumbling steps led from the lawn to a cobbled yard flanked by shippons and haybarns. Against the perimeter wall, a rectangular space which was once the floor of another building had been covered in sand, and here Bethan sat astride a palomino pony trotting in circles, pursued by a brace of black and white sheep dogs.