The Owl Service (12 page)

“About ten yards. Why?”

“Further than this peat hollow is from the cairn, anyway,” said Gwyn, “and not much higher. Stand up.”

Alison stood.

“Can you see yourself?”

“No.”

“Can you see me?”

“No.”

“Tell me when you can.” Gwyn walked down to the water. He was on the edge of the pool, and bending forward, when Alison called out.

“How is it compared with your reflection this morning?” said Gwyn.

“About the same size.”

“Same size?”

“Yes: I told you it looked as if we were next to each other.”

“Done any Physics, have you?”

“A bit.”

“Then you'll know, won't you? – ‘The image of an object in a mirror appears to be as far behind the mirror as the object is in front.'”

“Well?”

“So if you could see yourself in the fish tank you'd look as if you were twenty yards away – twice as far as you really were.”

“Well?”

“So you wouldn't look as big as me. So the angles were all wrong anyhow for you to see your reflection. So it wasn't your reflection. It couldn't have been, unless you were standing on the edge of the tank.”

“The water was glittery,” said Alison, “but I could tell it was me – my colour of hair, and face, and – well, it just was.”

“You saw a blonde reflected in the water,” said Gwyn. “Her hair came down either side of her face and she was fair-skinned. That's all you can be sure of.”

“You're confusing me,” said Alison. “I was trying to tell you about feeling happy, and you go and make it all ordinary with your angles and mirrors.”

“Ordinary? Girl, you can't be that stupid! Wake up! You saw the woman in the picture!You saw Blodeuwedd!”

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no—” Alison turned her face to the rocks of the cairn. “Don't talk like that. It must have been me reflected in the glass – in the window. Help me, Gwyn.”

“I want to help you, but you don't help me,” said Gwyn. “This thing won't go away if you shut your eyes, Alison. Come along and I'll show you.”

Gwyn set off across the plateau. Alison held on to the cairn as if to a lifebuoy, but as Gwyn drew further away and merged into the sun haze she plunged after him through the bog.

“Good girl.”

“I'm not a poodle,” said Alison.

“That's better,” said Gwyn.

They laughed.

“Did you scrape the painting off?” said Alison.

“Did you scrape the pattern?” said Gwyn.

The water was behind them, and parched grass lay like bloom on the mountain.

“It's so big,” said Alison. “All the things that seem important don't matter up here. It's so big.”

“Remember that, then,” said Gwyn.

“Mountains and cold kippers?”

Gwyn and Alison laughed again.

“Your stepbrother's a right charmer,” said Gwyn.

“It's only Roger's way,” said Alison, “and he feels dreadful about it afterwards. He's had a pretty rough time. His mother walked out, you know, and Mummy says it was in all the papers. Mummy calls her ‘The Birmingham Belle'.”

“Nice lady, your Mam,” said Gwyn. “How does Roger take that?”

“She never says it in front of Roger – not on purpose. He was very fond of his mother.”

“Yes, he is touchy,” said Gwyn. “By, I wish mine would flit.”

“Why are you so brittle?” said Alison.

“Me?” said Gwyn. “The three of us are lame ducks, by the sound of it. My legs snap easy, that's all.” He started to waddle with a limp.

“Gwyn! You're impossible!”

“Quack,” said Gwyn.

“Where are we going? I mustn't be late.”

“Your sense of direction's not much good, girl. We're making for the valley, but farther along from the peat road. You can see the valley opening up now, can't you? Head for that rock straight in front.”

“Why? What is it?”

“The Ravenstone. You'll see.”

The plateau dipped to the outcrop, and then –

“Gosh!” said Alison.

The Ravenstone was a mass of vertical slates sticking four or five feet out of the edge of the valley, a platform as Gwyn and Alison approached it, but at its base the green mountain fell sheer to the river fifteen hundred feet below.

“How super!”

“Never been before?”

“Never!”

“Not bad, is it?”

“How does the grass manage to grow?” said Alison.

“It's the sheep are the problem,” said Gwyn. “Mostyn Lewis-Jones breeds them with short left legs, and Gareth Pugh breeds short right legs. There's the boundary fence between the two farms, see, right down the mountain. Mostyn's sheep eat from right to left, and Gareth's from left to right across the slope. When they reach the fence they have to walk backwards and then start again.”

“Isn't it cruel to the sheep?” said Alison.

“Why?”

“When they're on level ground.”

“No. They have special stilts for the short legs,” said Gwyn: “called wether-go-nimbles. It's an old Welsh craft. They used to carve them in the long winter evenings, but now they're mostly made of fire-glass.”

“Gosh,” said Alison.

“There's a lot more to farming than people think,” said Gwyn.

“Yes,” said Alison. “Gwyn! What's the matter?”

Gwyn had sunk to his knees. He fell forward with his head and arms hanging down the Ravenstone and his feet drummed the turf.

“Are you ill?”

Gwyn was red in the face and shaking all over. “It's an old Welsh custom!” he gasped. “Called – called Soaking the Saxon!”

“What! Oh!”Alison hit his shoulders. “Oh! And I believed you! You – you – oh, Gwyn!”

They both hung over the Ravenstone and scattered the sheep along the mountain with their laughter.

“Don't you dare tell anyone!” said Alison. “I'd never forgive you. Oh! Stilts –!”And she collapsed again.

Gwyn rolled over and sat on the edge of the stone. “Don't worry, girl. I don't go blabbing. By, but that was a good one!”

Alison sat up.

“If it had been anybody else I'd have wanted to die,” she said. “If it had happened at a party – I really did believe you! You won't tell?”

“No. It'd spoil it.”

“Gosh, it's the funniest thing in years.”

“You're a strange girl,” said Gwyn. “One minute you're petrified, the next you haven't a care in the world. I suppose it's the same as toothache: when it stops it doesn't bother you until the next time.”

“It's only – that: the owls,” said Alison. “They frighten me.”

“Come here, you strange girl,” said Gwyn, “and listen. We've had a good laugh, and we're on top of the mountains, and it's a sunny day, and there's nothing to be frightened of. But you must listen, because we've got to go back soon.”

“I can see why these valleys make good reservoirs,” said Alison. “All you have to do is put a dam across the bottom end.”

“Not the most tactful remark,” said Gwyn. “But you're dead right.”

“It's quite a thought, though,” said Alison. “That thin bit of silver down there would fill the whole valley in time, and we'd be sitting here on the edge of a lake. Clive was wrong! This would be just the spot for fishing – better than his old pools, anyway.”

“Have you noticed how you can hear the river, even though it's so far off? said Gwyn. “And the motorbike going up the pass? Sound rises. Listen to that river. It's what lasts. Wherever you go you can think of that noise, and you know what you hear in your head is in the valley at the same moment. It never stops. It never has stopped since it began. It was the last sound Lleu Llaw Gyffes heard before he was killed. Gronw heard it, in his turn. We hear it now.”

“Gwyn—”

“Shh. Don't be frightened. Listen.”

“S
uppose,” said Gwyn. “Just suppose, a long time back, hundreds and hundreds of years, someone, somehow, did something in this valley. Suppose he found a way to control some power, or force, and used it to make a woman out of flowers. And suppose it went wrong – got out of hand – I don't know. It got out of hand because it wasn't neutral any more. There was a brain behind it. Do you follow? Neutral like a battery, I mean. You can use it to explode a bomb or to fry an egg: it depends on you.”

“What is the power?” said Alison.

“I can't explain,” said Gwyn. “I once saw a nettle growing in an old garage in Aber. A pale little thing it was. It had split the concrete floor.”

“I wonder how he felt when he saw what he'd done,” said Alison. “It'd be enough to send him off his head. But why wasn't it finished with long ago?”

“I don't think it can be finished,” said Gwyn. “I think this valley really is a kind of reservoir. The house, look, smack in the middle, with the mountains all round, shutting it in, guarding the house. I think the power is always there and always will be. It builds up and builds up until it has to be let loose – like filling and emptying a dam. And it works though people. I said to Roger that I thought the plates were batteries and you were the wires.”

“If the force was in the plates,” said Alison, “I've let it out, and everything's right again. Oh, Gwyn, is it?”

“No. This is what frightens me. It's not as quick as that. The force was in the plates, and in the painting, but it's in us now. That's where the pattern's gone. And Huw's trying to deal with it.”

“Huw? Why him?”

“He's a descendant of Gwydion, or of Lleu Llaw Gyffes: it comes to the same thing. You wouldn't credit it, but it must be true. And all his talk is something he can't quite remember, or can't quite forget. He doesn't understand it, mind: it's more of an instinct with him, it's that deep. For instance, he says the painting was done by his uncle – well, you saw how old it was, didn't you? But I bet he's not wrong. It's a question of which uncle!”

“But Huw's a labourer,” said Alison.

“And what else could he be here?” said Gwyn. “He's not a labourer to the people in this valley. I'll tell you that much. It's a queer word they use for him: old, too: can't give you the English, but it's something between ‘sir' and ‘master' and ‘father' – respectful and friendly, very clannish. Anyway, Huw's – responsible.”

“Gwyn, are you sure about all this?”

“Of course I'm not sure. If I was back in Aber I'd laugh the whole thing off and say we were barmy. But I'm here in the valley, and it's an answer that fits. Give me a better one and I'll jump at it.”

“You're right,” said Alison. “I know you are. I've felt it, but couldn't put it into words like you can. Look at this sick valley, Gwyn. Tumbledown buildings: rough land. I saw two dead sheep on the way up the track. Even poor old Clive can't catch a tiddler. Maybe once the power's loose things'll be better, until the next time—”

“Don't talk like that, girl,” said Gwyn.

“We ought to be going back,” said Alison. “Thanks for telling me, Gwyn.”

“You mustn't give in to it. It could burn you out.”

“I'm not giving in.”

“You look miserable.”

“No. I've been so happy this afternoon: I can understand how she feels always alone. No wonder she's cruel. What will happen next?”

“I've no idea,” said Gwyn. “We must watch out, though.”

“It's going to be hard to see each other,” said Alison. “My mother's dug her toes in, and she won't budge.”

“This is more important than your Mam,” said Gwyn. “If there is anything you're to come at once. And we'll meet each day by the seat in the kitchen garden. You can't be snooped on there, the hedge is too thick. What time?”

“About four,” said Alison. “She's usually resting in the afternoons.”

“No more head-in-the-sand, either,” said Gwyn.

“I'll explain to Roger,” said Alison. “We're all in it, aren't we?”

Gwyn stood up. “I suppose we are. I can't trust myself to leave his nose unbent, though, so you'd better tell him. Red, black and green, is it? I wonder who's the earth.”

“Sorry,” said Alison. “I'm not with you.”

“Try changing the plug on your record player some time, if you have one: you'll see.”

“It's a portable,” said Alison.

“A portable?” said Gwyn. “Is it here? Will it play?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I'd like to borrow it for a few hours,” said Gwyn, “if Mummy will let you. Come on, girl. Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.”

They walked back to the peat road.

“You might find out some more about your father's cousin,” said Gwyn.

“Bertram?”

“Yes. What happened to him? What kind of a person was he?”

“I'll try,” said Alison. “Is it to do with this? There's a sort of fake mystery about him. I've noticed whenever he's mentioned Mummy goes all tragic. She doesn't actually say anything – it's the way she nods her head. I think she enjoys it.”

“Well, see what you can dig up, will you?” said Gwyn.

They stopped at the scree where Gwyn had been hiding.

“You take the high road, and I'll take the low road,” said Gwyn. “And I'll be insolvent afore ye—Come on, Alison, cheer up. Please don't look so miserable.”

“I'm happy,” said Alison. “Gwyn. I want you to do something.”

Gwyn bowed.

“Wait by the hen house now,” said Alison. “I'll have to be quick. But wait.”

“That's easy,” said Gwyn. “Well. I'd better go.”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow, then. Four o'clock.”

“Yes. And the hen house.”