The House of Women (19 page)

A craggy man, aged by the elements, sat on a stump of mossy wall, watching child and pony. He smiled briefly at Annie and nodded stiffly to McKenna as they passed.

‘
That’s a beautiful pony,’ McKenna said.

‘
Gladys started breeding palomino cobs a long time ago, probably when she realized she’d never have children.’ Annie waved to her daughter, who studiously took no notice. ‘Megan’s the latest in the line.’ She made for another arched opening in the wall, pushing open a sun-bleached wooden gate on to a sweep of pasture, where three more golden horses sheltered from the sun beneath a stand of massive oaks which looked as old as the house. The neighbouring fields were speckled with sheep, like the fields he passed on his journey. ‘That’s Tara.’ She pointed to a graceful animal rippling with shadows. ‘She’s Megan’s dam, and I ride her quite often. The slightly darker one is Bella, her dam, and the big colt is Bryn, Megan’s brother.’ She smiled. ‘You ride, don’t you? Dewi Prys told Phoebe.’

‘
Did he also tell her I fall off?’

‘
He said you had a bump last year, but everyone comes off some time. Bella chucked Gladys over a wall in the spring. She broke her arm, but it hasn’t bothered her. She says horseback is the only way to bring the sheep off the mountains, which is her excuse for enjoying a good gallop.’

‘
And she looks very good for it. Does she have help around the house?’

‘
Meirion’s daughters do the heavy work, and the district nurse comes twice a week to bathe Gertrude.’

‘
Can she walk?’

‘
She can totter from her chair to the little room off the parlour where she sleeps, but she can’t toilet herself, or dress herself, or even eat by herself. I’m sure she’s an early victim of the new strain of Creuzfeldt-Jakob, but Ned and Gladys reckon she was cursed for bringing May blossom into the house when she was little. Then again, I wonder if the whole family isn’t hexed.’ Talking over her shoulder, she set off along a well-trodden path through the grass beside the boundary wall. ‘Their great grandfather’s brother went to America in 1860, bought a huge tract of land from the government for next to nothing, and built a farm. Two years later, he lost his scalp to the Sioux in the Minnesota Massacre.’

‘
These things happen,’ McKenna said. Waist high fronds of grass dropped seeds on his clothes as he passed by. ‘Senile dementia’s very common, and Gladys did say Gertrude was always rather strange.’

‘
Senile dementia runs in families, and they’re all very strange, but Gertrude’s the only one to go completely gaga.’ Annie stopped, surveying the hills and pastures, and her perfume drifted towards him, mingled with the scents of the land.

Standing at her side, he said:
‘There’s a tide of sheep out there, isn’t there? As far as the eye can see.’

‘
And most of them belong to Gladys.’ She moved on, brushing her hand through the plumes of grass. ‘I expect you saw thousands more on the way here, but there isn’t a cow or calf for miles around. They’ve all been slaughtered.’ She fell quiet, walking slowly along the path, then added: ‘I’m not the only one who thinks Gertrude caught mad cow disease, you know. Most of the village believe she did. They watch each other all the time, looking for what they saw in Gertrude so long ago, and hoping desperately not to find it.’

The sun drifted further to the west, dragging long shadows over the earth, and walking close behind her, McKenna thought of death in its many guises, creeping across this beautiful landscape. One of the horses whinnied, and he turned, to see the three of them streaming across the field, bucking and kicking.
‘D’you think animals have any conception of death?’ he asked. ‘Or do they simply accept it as the natural end to life? It would save a lot of grief if we could do the same.’

‘
But we never can, can we?’ She watched the horses, pensively, then walked on. ‘We always find regrets, for what we’ve lost, or not done, or not said, or just for the way death comes, even though it’s always a thief. It stole from Ned, and Phoebe, and George, and the rest of us, and we’ll never know how big or small each theft was.’ Opening a rotted wooden gate under another arch in the wall, she added: ‘But then, we rely on sex and death to keep the world turning, don’t we?’

Through the gate, an unbroken length of a barn wall reached into the courtyard, where Bethan now stood on an upturned crate at the side of the little mare, reaching high to unbuckle the girth straps. Here and there in the ancient masonry, McKenna saw signs of clumsy repairs, and, at intervals under the eaves, galvanized iron hooks held lichen-stained roof tiles in place.

‘When she’s groomed and fed Megan, she’ll have tea in Meirion’s mansion.’ Annie smiled, and, instead of entering the courtyard, turned westwards along the path towards a tiny stone structure built into the wall. A little stone staircase ran up its gable end to a minute arched doorway, under a round window with wooden shutters. ‘It’s the oldest building on the land, and we’ve no idea what it was for.’ Going around to its other gable end, she opened the door, stooping below the lintel. ‘It was our playhouse when we were younger, and it’s always been a den for the farmhands. In the winter, they sit in here with a roaring fire, playing cards and setting the world to rights.’ She pointed out a row of old wooden pegs rammed higgledy-piggledy into the twisted beam above the iron grate. ‘Their caps hang there in a row, every one with finger marks in the same place where they tweak them off.’

Four old upright chairs stood on a floor of dried earth, around a table askew on its legs, and through the one small window, he saw a new view of the woods above the village, so distorted by the old glass it wrenched the eyes. On the worn stone window-ledge, casting a blurry shadow, the
doppelganger
of Phoebe’s cat surveyed him with glassy eyes.

Annie giggled.
‘Tom’s one of her kittens. Phoebe calls her “Ur-cat”, as in the “mother of all cats”, and don’t try to stroke her, because she’s likely to have your arm off. She only lets Gladys, Phoebe and Bethan touch her.’

‘
Not you?’

She shook her head, smiling.
‘Not since I conned her into a carrying box for a trip to the vet.’

‘
And not Mina?’

‘
Mina doesn’t like animals, and they don’t like her. I suppose they sense something they need to fear.’ The smile died, like a cloud over the sun. ‘She hated coming here when she was younger, and she got so bored we’d find her chasing the sheep, worrying them like a rogue dog.’ She leaned against the wall, hands in pockets. ‘She’s so lacking in imagination I feel sorry for her, and with the best will in the world, I can’t understand why she’s so different from Phoebe and me.’

‘
Even as your sister,’ McKenna said, ‘she’s entitled to her differences and individuality.’

‘
You’re an only child, aren’t you? It shows, somehow. You must feel isolated from the moment you’re born.’

‘
And even more so when all the memories that created you die with your parents, so I can’t even imagine the sort of continuity which exists between you and Phoebe and Mina.’ He smiled. ‘All I can do is feel envious.’

‘
There’s little but blood between us and Mina.’ She moved away from the wall, stepping into a beam of light, dust motes drifting about her hair and clothes. ‘Even at my age, I find this place enchanting, but where Phoebe and I see magic, Mina sees a dirty hovel.’ She grinned again. ‘Bethan thinks it was built for the fairies, although in this neck of the woods, it was more likely a hide out for witches and hobgoblins, or even part of the Ingrams’s estate.’ Wiping dust from her hands, she laughed. ‘Their fame won’t have spread to Bangor, but they’re supposed to be very wealthy. Martha’r Mynydd, who lives in a farm beyond Bala, says Mr Ingram and his pretty young daughter often come to her evening gatherings.’

‘
And?’

‘
They don’t exist, and as far as we know, they never did. Martha’s another crazy woman.’ She nodded to the cat, and made for the door. ‘Gladys will have fed Gertrude by now, so we can go back. Unappealing sights like that are best kept private, aren’t they?’ She sighed. ‘I can’t help thinking Gertrude’s death would make better sense than Ned’s.’

‘
Death isn’t meant to make sense,’ McKenna said. He glanced at his watch. ‘I told the solicitor in Bala I might call.’

‘
Why? Gladys can show you her father’s will, if it matters, and she’ll know if Ned lodged any papers there. She’s had power of attorney for years, because with Ned and Gertrude both so prone to being
non
compos
mentis
, there was no option.’

The front door was still open, but instead of returning to the parlour, she took him up the stairs. The upper floor was divided by partitions of blackened, coarsely-grained oak, and at the head of the staircase, the reek of dry rot was overpowering. Hefting her shoulder against a door to the ri
ght, she pointed to webs of fungus garlanding the ceiling beams. ‘That’s what you can smell,’ she said, then closed the door with a thud.

Ned
’s old room was on the other side of the stairwell, along a short corridor lit only by sunlight seeping through from the landing. That door, too, fitted ill in its frame, and jammed itself into the floor with a dreadful screech as Annie eased it open.

Tall cupboards a
nd heavy chests, crudely carpentered from old dark wood, and dull with age and neglect, lined one wall, and against another stood a beautiful mahogany desk and a battered captain’s chair. The brass bedstead, tarnished now, and lacking one of its finials, was covered with a handmade quilt, a history of the family’s life stitched together, and now so worn in places that only a few fine threads of silk halted total disintegration. More black fabric was draped over the oil paintings which hung about the walls, dressing the house in mourning, and as McKenna moved around the room, trying to decipher the landscapes and faces behind years of dirt on the canvases, the floorboards creaked under him and he felt a disconcerting bounce in the joists below, as if they too were ravaged by the fungus. Treading gingerly, he skirted a washstand with a fine oval mirror on its chipped marble top, and stood by the window, looking into the heart of the village.

So close he could hear her breathe, and smell the scent of fresh air and sunshine about her, Annie said:
‘When he was a boy, Uncle Ned used to stand where you are now, like a prisoner in a high tower. If you look to the right, you can see the chapel roof beyond the trees by the church, although there’s only one cemetery, which Phoebe, of course, calls the “flesh-farm”.’ Elbows on the washstand, she added: ‘Church folk are buried this side of the trees, chapel folk the other, and little Amos is there with the rest of the family. He died from polio when he was four, so I suppose he’ll always be “little Amos”, and we’ll never know if his death was a bad thing or not.’

‘
Who was he?’

‘
The youngest child. Their mother went into a virtual collapse when he died, which is why Gladys reared Ned, and not long afterwards, Gertrude’s little daughter died. She was four, as well.’

‘
And Gertrude’s husband?’

‘
She never had one. Madness isn’t all we inherit.’ She turned away. ‘When I had Bethan, everyone but Ned and Gladys treated me like an outcast. Mina said I’d ruined her reputation, and Mama was so bitterly hurt and disappointed she had a relapse. She’s still convinced I’ve wrecked any chance of a decent marriage.’

‘
What about your father?’

‘
He pretends she doesn’t exist. He hasn’t been back since she was born in any case, but he never sends birthday or Christmas gifts, or even cards.’

*

Gertrude slept again in her chair, smelling of soap instead of bitter old age, a rug woven from the strange colours and ancient symbols of Welsh tapestry wrapped around her knees to ward off a chill seeping through the threadbare carpet. McKenna noticed an oval chamber pot poking out from under her chair, its inside stained, its outside scattered with posies.

While Annie washed dishes in the kitchen, Gladys sat beside him on the settle, an album of faded photographs in her hands, turning pages spotted with mildew, and pointing out the few quick and the many dead among the pensive, proud, troubled and self-conscious faces in this tribal record. Such Welsh faces, he thought, watching her spindly fingers, and in profile, some were almost concave, like the wicked witches in fairy stories. As she chattered on, he realized there was not a black face to be seen, and wondered if that collision of memory and history were more painful than the rest.

‘Have you pictures of the slaves?’ he asked. ‘Or rather, their descendants? George said some of them stayed as free men and women.’

‘
Only because they had nowhere else to go at the time.’ Annie quietly came back from the kitchen, and took up her seat beside Gertrude. ‘They couldn’t get away fast enough when the heavy industries developed in South Wales, even though it was only an exchange of one slavery for another.’

‘
You’ve always had socialist leanings,’ Gladys said to her. ‘But do they do you any good?’ Then to McKenna, she added: ‘We had quite a few photos at one time, and some other very old pictures. Ned had them for his essay, but I don’t recall him sending them back.’