The Truth Against the World (16 page)

After they'd gone, Gareth pulled a super-serious face and repeated, “You kids have fun chatting” in what sounded like a cowboy voice.

I raised my eyebrows at him and went to get two bulbous bottles of Orangina from the fridge. “Is that what Americans sound like to you?”

“Well, uh, no,” he said, following me into the kitchenette. “Okay, sort of. I can't help it. Sorry.”

I smiled. “I'll start butchering some Welsh for you, then you'll be sorry.”

I sat down on one side of the table and Gareth sat across from me. I slid one of the sodas over to him.

“Thanks,” he said. “Your Welsh is probably better than mine. It's been years.”

“I haven't had that many chances to practice on actual people,” I pointed out.

“Yeah,” he said. He looked away. “Sorry,” he said again. “It—all of this—must be difficult.”

“Yeah,” I said. I stared at the table. Then, suddenly, it all spilled out: Gee Gee's decline, the scare of the previous day, and how frustrated and devastated I was feeling that I would probably never be able to talk to her again, never hear her voice again as she sang to me or read to me. I felt the burning of tears behind my eyelids and blinked rapidly. I would not cry, not now.

Gareth just looked at me steadily, his eyes slightly magnified behind his glasses, letting me talk.

After telling him what I'd learned from Margie about Great-Grandpa John, I finally ran out of words, breathing hard as if I'd been running.

“I can see why you'd be cheesed off, not knowing that,” he said. “'Course parents never do tell you what you want to know. They're good at keeping secrets.”

“I guess my family's
really
good at it,” I said, twisting the Orangina cap around and around in my hands.

“Yeah, well … every family's got 'em. You've got me thinking there's something going on with my family now.” He softened his words with a half smile. He ducked his head a little, and a completely unruly and slightly tangled section of hair flopped partially over his glasses on one side. I had the momentary urge to reach out and tuck it back behind his ear.

“Hey,” he went on. “Do you think maybe your parents don't
know
about your great-granddad being a widower? I mean, if your great-gran never talked about it, maybe she didn't even tell them. Maybe she just didn't think it was important. It was a long time ago.”

“I don't know.” I frowned slightly. “I'll ask my dad tonight, I guess.”

There was a short silence.

“Oh, I brought this for you,” Gareth said, pulling a folder out from underneath the cake box. Inside was a tattered map of the South Wales coast.

“Wow, thanks.” I flipped open the map, absently. “You know, I tried calling you earlier. I tried to leave a message with your great-grandfather, but he sounded … I don't know. Weird.”

“Weird?” Gareth looked surprised.

I considered my words. “He actually sounded sort of mad. Angry. I told him who I was, and he just went totally quiet for a minute. Then it was like he couldn't wait to get off the phone.”

A puzzled expression crept over Gareth's face, then a tiny frown.

“I didn't know if maybe he didn't like girls calling you or what,” I said, flustered. “But I was really hoping to talk to him sometime. Ask him whether he remembers anything about Gee Gee, or even Olwen.”

“Hmm. Well, it's probably not you,” Gareth said. “He doesn't like the telephone. He usually sounds a bit like a hermit using the phone for the first time in decades.”

I tried to smile.

“It's weird, though,” he continued. “He's been cranky since I got here. More than usual, I mean. And quieter. He hardly said a word to me when he gave me your phone message. And I wouldn't count on getting any stories out of him, either,” he added with a note of regret. “I couldn't get much out of him for my family tree project.”

“What's that? A school thing?”

“Yeah, for history class.” Gareth nodded. “That's how I found you—your website, I mean. I was doing research on public records. I was going to interview him about old times, but he didn't want to talk.”

I looked at him more closely. “What do you mean?”

“I guess he just wants to forget all about it. Maybe it was really tough.” He took a gulp of soda.

“Maybe,” I agreed. “Seems like a pretty common story.”

“I don't know much about his life. You probably think that's pretty sad.”

“No, I—” I was about to tell him what a weird coincidence it was that neither one of our great-grandparents seemed to want to talk about anything, when there was a knock at the front door. I swallowed the rest of my sentence as Mom appeared and let in the nurse for her afternoon check on Gee Gee. Then, not five minutes later, there was another knock, and Hugh and Annie swept in with a huge vase of wildflowers.

Now the tiny cottage really did seem to be bursting at the seams. Nurse Morgan, my dad, and Hugh were all crowded into Gee Gee's bedroom, while my mom exchanged pleasantries with Annie in the front room and Gareth and I sat uncomfortably at the table. There were several conversations going on at once, voices everywhere—Hugh's bass rumble, Dad's slightly more subdued tones, the nurse's bubbly briskness, Annie's cheery alto, Mom's crisp and polite guest-voice, and nowhere, nowhere to be heard but in my mind, Gee Gee.

I put my head in my hands, trying to tune it all out.

“Okay?” Gareth asked.

I nodded, but after a moment I could hear my mom's voice getting shrill.

“Don't get the teacups down; I'll take care of it,” she fretted, shooing my dad out of the tiny kitchenette. “There's only room in here for one of us.”

I shot Gareth a pained look, and he smiled sympathetically. “I should go,” he said.

Part of me wanted him to stay, but the other part of me wanted to run into my room and pull a pillow over my head. “Thanks again for coming. I wish we could have looked at the map more.”

“Well, maybe tomorrow?” Gareth stood and put on his jacket. “I've got a few more photos to show you.”

“Definitely,” I said, walking with him to the door. “How about meeting at the museum in the morning?” I hoped Gee Gee would be okay while I was gone, because this was something I had to do, while I was here. I didn't want to live my life tentatively, in fear of what might happen. And I already knew what was going to happen with Gee Gee. It was the past I didn't know about; it was the past everyone seemed to be afraid of.

And I didn't think Gee Gee had ever lived tentatively, no matter how bad things had gotten.

“Right,” Gareth said. “See you then.” There was a long silence. He didn't seem to want to leave, and I couldn't seem to close the door and go back inside.

Then: “Sleep well,” he said, “and pleasant dreams.” He looked right at me, intensely, his eyes boring into mine, before turning away and heading back down the path toward the lane.

I sat up in bed, not sure what had disturbed me. The next thing I knew I was standing next to my bed, looking down at my own sleeping form.

Watching myself sleep made me intensely, viscerally uncomfortable, so I turned away and opened the door that led into the main room.

When I stepped across the threshold, instead of entering our doily-festooned sitting area I was back in that darkened room with the carved, gold-painted mirror—the room where I'd seen Olwen in another dream. The windows were draped with black, not letting in even a scrap of moonlight.

A very pregnant, very young Rhiannon was sitting in a high-backed chair in the corner. An older woman hissed at her, “If you won't go into the hostel, you'll be having it here like a common whore, and everyone will know what you are!” The young Gee Gee recoiled, cringing away in her unyielding seat.

I backed away, astonished, through the door I'd just opened, but instead of being back in my bedroom, I was in yet another version of the same living room. The dark draperies had been replaced by curtains of some kind of plain cloth. I was facing the mirror, and reflected in it was a cot in the corner of the room, next to a heavy wooden bureau. There was a figure lying on the cot, but not asleep; curled up in a fetal position, shoulders shaking. The bottom drawer of the bureau was pulled out and a toddler lay asleep in it, emaciated and small. At the sound of a muffled sob, I turned around.

The room changed again. I was back in the dream I'd had before, the candle glow from the hall growing brighter as little Olwen rounded the corner. A racking cough shuddered her tiny frame.

I couldn't escape. I was trapped in this claustrophobic little bungalow no matter what I tried to do.

I desperately ran toward what seemed to be the front door—muddily, as if slogging through glue—and then I was outside, gulping in the clean air and sun on a clifftop near the sea. Green swaths of grass surrounded me; a crumbling stone steeple was just visible over a rise to one side. In front of me was Rhiannon, crying silently next to pile of stones, Great-Grandpa John standing behind her. His face was stoic and haggard despite his youth. She was gently placing a series of small objects—papers? trinkets?—in her lap, just out of my field of vision, obscured by her body.

A gust of ocean wind, salty and freezing, blew right through me with paralyzing chill and swirled me up, higher and higher, until I felt myself dissolving into it, the molecules of my being dissipating into nothing.

16

Nid doeth ond a gais.

No one is wise but
he that seeks.

Welsh proverb

Gareth kicked a stray ice-cream wrapper into the gutter, his hands shoved deep into his pockets and his shoulders hunched. He was meeting Wyn at the Cwm Tawel Museum in ten minutes, but he still wasn't sure what to say to her. She'd just picked up and moved thousands of miles to a cramped cottage to watch her great-grandmother die, and she had to deal with all of her parents' issues as well. Everything he came up with sounded like a platitude. Besides that, he was impatient at making so little progress in finding Olwen, and annoyed at his great-granddad for being weird to Wyn.

He turned onto Heol Owain Glyndwr. The street was empty, and his footsteps crunched in the gravel on the side of the road. Owain Glyndwr, the great Welsh hero. Gareth had studied him in school, back when he'd lived in Swansea. Owain had led some kind of revolt that had ultimately been quashed.

Gareth hoped it wasn't a sign.

He rounded a curve in the road and caught sight of Wyn standing in front of the small, brick-fronted museum. She gave him a quick wave, her gray raincoat flapping in the wind.
Don't be daft, now
, he told himself.
Just be normal
.

“Hey,” Wyn said, smiling a little. “The museum doesn't open for another ten minutes.”

He watched as she tried to smooth down the billowing sides of her coat. Her eyes were red-rimmed and dark-shadowed. “Get any rest last night?”

“Not really.” She stepped onto the path of white rocks that led around the neatly manicured little flower garden in front of the museum; Gareth followed. “I couldn't sleep, actually. I talked to my dad about what Margie said.” She paused, and stopped to smell a rose from a small tree that had been pruned into a perfect ovoid.

“And?”

“You know, I was so sure that Dad had to know about his grandfather. I mean, how could he not?” Wyn didn't look at him, just kept trudging around the short, circular garden path. Gareth stayed quiet, though he was itching to know what had happened. He took off his glasses and cleaned them, the garden and Wyn refracting into blurry versions of themselves.

“When I asked him about John being a widower, he got all weird on me,” she finally said. “I guess it's a lot for him to take right now, but I wish he'd told me what he was thinking.”

“So he just said nothing?”

“He changed the subject. It seemed like he didn't want to talk about it.” Wyn picked up a piece of white gravel and clutched it in her hand. “The strange thing is, I was kind of glad.” She looked at him.

Gareth could relate to that. It would be even worse if they tried to explain about Olwen and nobody believed them.

“I'm not really sure how much Dad
does
know,” Wyn continued. “It seems like Gee Gee kept everything secret from her life before. In Wales.”

Gareth tried a smile. “It's the opposite in my family. My mum's such a gossip, she knows everything even remotely scandalous. Dodgy business transactions, babies conceived slightly out of wedlock—if it happened, she knows about it!”

Wyn smiled at him wryly. “Even if it was your second cousin thrice removed?”

“Yeah. 'Course, I'm not really sure what that even means—‘thrice removed.' It's like whoever got removed three times had to have done something really horrible, you know, to get their membership in the family rescinded,” he said.

Wyn laughed a little then, a fluttery-sounding thing, and it was like a tiny spark fired up in his brain. He blushed and looked away.

He'd made her laugh, which was good. But this was all a bit intense, this
thing
between them. Too many coincidences and too much that couldn't be explained, except to each other. That small knot of fear in his stomach that wouldn't go away.

“Well, anyway,” Wyn said, serious now. “Gee Gee said how hard life was during the war. So I guess she just wanted to forget about all of that. I don't see how she could, though. Especially if they'd had a daughter who died.”

“It must have been a tough time,” Gareth said. “My great-granddad doesn't like to talk about those days much either, you know.”

“But you'd have to talk about your life to someone, wouldn't you?” Wyn persisted. Gareth had to agree; it seemed odd that nobody was willing to say anything about their pasts. It made him start thinking about conspiracy theories.

“Maybe they were all Jerry spies,” he said, half jokingly.

“I'd be ready to believe anything at this point.” Wyn shook her head and dropped the white rock with a clatter.

“Well, that's why we're here, isn't it? To get more information.” Gareth pointed at the door of the museum, which had just creaked open. A slight blond girl about their age unlocked the heavy iron screen door. “Didn't you say—er—what's-his-name was an evacuated child in your great-gran's house?”

Wyn nodded. “If anyone else still living is going to know what Gee Gee was up to then, I guess it would be Peter Robinson.” She looked uncertain.

No, she looked sad. And Gareth found he didn't like it at all. He much preferred Wyn laughing.

He slouched toward the door, hoping this Peter Robinson would shed some light on the subject once and for all. He thought of Olwen—the ghost—and shivered. Maybe they could figure things out without ever needing to go back to the cromlech. Maybe this would be enough.

The museum was a tiny, two-room converted house cluttered with period furniture, old photos, and a handful of glass display cases. Wyn seemed fascinated.

“It's so quaint,” she said.

Quaint was not Gareth's thing, but he kept quiet. Some of the old artifacts were cool, like the World War II gas mask complete with regulation carrying case. And perhaps the photos would prove useful.

“I'm sure you've been here a million times already,” Wyn said, “but I think it's cute.”

“Actually, I haven't come here since I was a kid. But it's just the same as I remembered.” A bit tedious, he thought.

They both turned as the door at the back opened. A tall, wiry man approached them; he looked at least seventy, with gray hair sticking out of his head every which way. He reminded Gareth of a stork, or maybe a heron. Some kind of gangly waterbird.

“Well now, even if I wasn't expecting you, I'd still know you were Olwen Evans.” The man's serious expression was interrupted momentarily by a crooked smile. To Gareth, it wasn't a reassuring smile—it seemed somehow forced. But Wyn looked pleased, so he kept his mouth shut.

“You've got the same hair Rhiannon did when she was your age. Quite a family resemblance.” The man stepped closer. “But I haven't introduced myself. I'm Peter Robinson. Margie's told me about you. And who's this, then?”

“I'm Gareth Lewis.” Gareth stuck his hand out and shook Peter's. “My great-granddad lives here in Cwm Tawel. I'm a friend of Wyn's.”

“Lewis,” Peter repeated, pulling his hand back quickly.

Very odd. Was Peter a hermit? Living out his days in this tiny museum? The thought was somewhat amusing, and Gareth hid a smirk.

As they browsed, Peter hovered behind them, telling them all about the musty old clothes and moldy account ledgers belonging to cottagers and farmers of days past. Finally, though, he did show them something relevant. After going back into the office and rummaging through a huge storage cabinet, he returned with a handful of black-and-white photographs from his own childhood. The one that really stood out to Gareth showed a group of three small children standing with a middle-aged couple in front of a small house. The children were gaunt and hollow-eyed, clutching their bags and gas masks, huge identification labels hanging from their coats like price tags. They looked warily, wearily, at the camera—an older boy and girl and a smaller, dirty-faced boy wearing shorts and a cap. Peter pointed at the small boy.

“If you can believe it, that was me in 1940 when I arrived at the Davies house. And look here at this one,” he said, pulling out a little square photo of the same boy sitting at a wooden table, a spoon poised halfway between his open mouth and a soup bowl. “I gained nearly half a stone that first week. It made the local newspaper! Of course, things had been horrific in Coventry before I left. And here, even with the rations”—he pointed at a ragged coupon book in a nearby display case—“I had so much more than before. And I got a new family. The Davies did so much for the children they took in. It was a shame to leave, but I needed the work, you see. But it was so wonderful. A new home.”

Gareth and Wyn peered at another photo of Peter, this one taken a few years later, in 1943. He was eleven years old then, he said. Next to Peter, quite a bit taller than he was, stood a young blond woman holding a cherubic toddler, and a teenage girl who could have been Wyn's sister, they looked so similar.

“That's Gee Gee,” Wyn said, her eyes widening.

Gareth felt as if someone had sucked all the air out of his lungs. He knew it was just genetics, but it was still creepy.

“Mr. Robinson.” Wyn's voice trembled slightly. “How well did you know my great-grandma?”

Peter looked at her intently. “Let's see now,” he said in his breathy voice. “I was eight when I arrived, on the very day that other picture there was taken. I stayed until I was twelve—both my parents were killed, you see, so I had nowhere else to go and it was easier for me just to go on living there. Mr. and Mrs. Davies were like parents to me.

“Rhiannon … well, she always had a bit of a wild streak. Something of the fey in her, or just rebelliousness, I could never be sure. She was forever doing something that her parents didn't approve of—following the Land Girls around and pretending to be one herself, insisting that her mam teach her how to shoot the family rifle in case the Germans invaded the village, slipping out to meet some young man or other from the nearby farms.” Peter chuckled wheezily.

“She had lots of boyfriends, you mean?” Wyn tilted her head, questioning.

“Oh, I can hardly remember now. There was a rumor she'd given Dai, the shop-boy, a peck on the cheek in exchange for an extra week's sugar ration. And then she did sneak out nights, every so often.”

Wyn was rapt, and Gareth couldn't help being intrigued himself.

“Most people were convinced she was meeting Dai. But sometimes she told me she would go talk to the other evacuees, or the gypsies at her uncle's farm. I once heard some ladies after church gossiping that she was consorting with a gypsy lad, or worse, an Englishman!” Peter gave us his crooked, birdlike smile. “But I don't believe any of it. No, I know Rhiannon, and nothing of the sort was possible. She was kind and generous with her friendship. That's all.”

Wyn looked at Gareth with a slight frown. He shrugged.

“Then, of course, she was ill for a long time—this was just after I moved out to the farm,” Peter continued. “And then the baby came into the house.”

“What baby?” Gareth asked, nearly in unison with Wyn. His heart beat a little more quickly.

“Why, her cousin's, of course,” Peter said. “It was 1944, I believe, some months after I'd left for the farm. There was a little baby girl the family took in. All us evacuees were gone by then, so there was room for the daughter of, oh, Sali, I think it was. I was told that Sali had to return straightaway to the Wrens, that was the Women's Royal Naval Service. I never met her, but saw the child once or twice. Dark hair like all the Davies.”

“The cousin's baby? What was her name?” Gareth leaned forward expectantly.

“Oh, I don't remember details like that anymore—can hardly remember my own name, when it comes down to it.” That lopsided smile appeared again. “Going senile, Margie says. But once I left for the farm, you know, I hardly kept in touch with the family, I'm sorry to say.”

Wyn still had a tiny frown of doubt wrinkling her forehead. And Gareth knew that what Peter was saying was clearly impossible. A cousin's baby. What a load of bollocks.

Every clue they had pointed in the direction of Olwen being Rhiannon's daughter. Wyn's dreams about Rhiannon and Olwen, the plaque Gareth himself had seen … 1944 was when Olwen had been born.

Peter shadowed the two of them to the museum's front door, and Gareth turned back one last time.

“Sir? Do you know of any ancient historical sites near here? I'm trying to find a place I visited with my parents. It's near an old church.” Gareth stopped in the doorway, Wyn a few steps ahead. “I was hoping to visit it again while I'm here.”

“Oh, well, I don't get out to the trails much, really,” Peter said. “If you hike these coasts long enough, you'll run into all sorts of interesting standing stones and dolmens.”

“Do you have any maps?” Gareth asked.

“Margie will have them at the bus station,” Peter said. “Now, I must be closing for lunch. Goodbye—
hwyl nawr
.”

“But—” Gareth started, but Wyn pulled him away, and in any case, the door was already shut.

They looked at each other.

“All right?” Gareth asked. “That was weird.”

“I'm okay.” She kicked at the gravel, crunching it with her shoe. “Peter seems really convinced it was a cousin's baby.”

“Yeah,” Gareth said, staring up at the sky gloomily. “I don't know, though.”

Wyn looked at her phone. “Oh no, I have to go,” she said. “I'm supposed to be back by noon.”

“Oh. Right.” There was a long silence. “Hey, sorry. Tell your parents … ” He trailed off awkwardly.

“Thanks,” Wyn said, smiling sadly. She gave Gareth a quick hug; he patted her on the back.

Why was this so complicated?

She started off up the road.