The Truth Against the World (7 page)

Gee Gee stopped, put a hand to her head; started again. “Once—it's funny I remember this so clearly now—Dad's team had to take away an unexploded bomb that had landed in the middle of the Morris's vegetable garden. We were so worried it would go off before they got it to Bomb Disposal. Of course, I had to keep the little ones, Petey and my brothers, from running over there to ‘help.'” She let out a small laugh, which turned to a dry cough. I handed her the cup of water from the end table next to the bed and settled back in, lying on my side with my head propped up.

“What about the rest of the time?” I asked tentatively. “You didn't have to take care of the boys all day, did you?” I wanted to know more about the cliffside, the sad young woman; I wanted to know more about
her,
but I didn't quite know how to ask.

“Well, with so many of the men away, a lot of us women had to do factory work. But I
was
at home, yes. It might sound strange to you now, but the truth is I longed for that life, the working life. The parties they used to throw for the war volunteers in the cities. The handsome American soldiers.” Her eyes crinkled with humor. “A girl from our village, Mair, she was so pretty, and she knew it. Just a year older than me. She had curly golden hair she was forever tossing about as if she thought she was a movie star.” Gee Gee smiled wryly. “The boys called her Jean Harlow. The girls called her … other things.”

I snorted a giggle.

“Well, Mair would go to work in Swansea and come home evenings with grease all over her face, looking like she'd been through a war herself, she did! I wasn't so jealous of her after that. And anyway, she couldn't keep
all
of the boys for herself. Still, she was independent.” Gee Gee drank a few more sips of water, then sank back onto the pillows and closed her eyes. In a barely perceptible voice, she mumbled, “That snooty Mair. She didn't have children to contend with, did she?”

I frowned. “What?” Was Gee Gee stuck with children? Whose? Her younger brothers, maybe? I searched her face, hoping for an answer, but she had already drifted back into a snooze, something that was happening more and more now.

After pulling up her blankets again, I got up gingerly and tiptoed out of the room. I wasn't sure what she'd meant, or why she'd told me that story, but it was time to get ready for school.

Only later, my boots pounding the dirty sidewalk on the way to school, did I realize that Gee Gee's story didn't fill in the blanks, didn't answer all the questions still brimming inside me. And the more I thought about everything she'd told me, the more questions I had. Why
wasn't
she working in a factory, if she wanted to so badly? And what did that remark mean, about Mair not having children to contend with? Gee Gee only had one child, Grandpa William, and he was born after the war. Maybe Gee Gee was thinking of other women she used to know. Or maybe she was getting confused; I'd heard that could happen. I could feel tears gathering at the corners of my eyes.

There was so much I didn't know. And deep down, the same thoughts kept nagging at me. What was Gee Gee
not
telling me? Why? And why did I keep dreaming about it?

9

Ym mhob cyfyngder y mae addysg.

There is a lesson in
every perplexity.

Welsh proverb

Gareth patted down his hair in the hallway mirror for at least the tenth time. The stiff waves were still in place. In fact, he'd used so much of his dad's hair gel that there was no chance it was going to move. Not that Wyn was going to be able to see his hair that well through the webcam, but at least it was something he could exert control over. Nothing else in his life seemed to be quite cooperating.

He heard the jaunty Skype ringtone and raced over to the computer desk.

“Hello?” There was no answer at first, no image, and for a moment Gareth was afraid the odd thing that had happened on his phone was now happening on the computer. He sucked in a breath, but finally an image loaded.

Her
image, long brown hair and all. The window in the room behind her made it a little difficult to see her, but he could tell she had a sprinkling of freckles across her nose that he hadn't noticed in her photo. She didn't look like the little Olwen, and yet … she did. He suppressed a shiver.

“I'm here!” she said. Her voice sounded nervous, quiet—not like the other Olwen at all—and she was smiling. “Hi.
Shwmae
?”

Gareth couldn't help smiling back. “
Da iawn, diolch
. Um … and that's all the Welsh I can remember,” he said apologetically.

She laughed, and he kept grinning like a fool, all through their awkward first few sentences. He started to relax as she asked him more questions about himself, about his parents and his childhood in Wales. She was there, and she was
real
. She was so enthusiastic that he wished he did remember the Welsh he'd learned in primary school.

“I guess I was just too young to pay much attention,” he said, ducking his head.

“My Gee Gee speaks Welsh,” Wyn said. “But she didn't really teach my grandpa. I never met him, anyway. And my dad doesn't speak any.”

“Same with my dad,” Gareth said. “'Course, he didn't learn much of it in the first place, and then he forgot it all when he went to London for university. And my mum's English.” Wyn looked a little disappointed, so he rushed on to say, “My great-granddad still lives in Cwm Tawel, and he speaks it some, even though he's English. He moved there when he was a boy.”

“Cwm Tawel?” Her face went pale.

“Yeah, it means ‘quiet valley,'” he said.

Wyn was quiet for a moment. “No, I know. It's just …
You're talking about Cwm Tawel in South Wales, right?”

“Only one I know of,” he said, tilting his head questioningly.

“Well, you won't believe this,” she said, “but that's where my Gee Gee's from.”

Gareth blinked, and the world spun crazily around him for a moment. He took a deep breath and things steadied again. “No fooling. You're right, I can't believe it.” They both stared at each other silently for a moment. “Do you think they know each other?” he asked, his voice shaking a bit. “His name's Edward Lewis.”

“I don't think so. I asked her about Lewises in Cwm Tawel, but she didn't seem to know any.” Wyn's voice sounded uncertain, though.

“I'll have to ask my great-granddad about it. It's not that big a town. You'll see.” Gareth tried to smile.

There was a long pause, and then Wyn cleared her throat. “Could I ask you something? It's kind of personal … and weird.”

“Okay,” he said, wondering how much weirder it was possible for this conversation to get.

She looked off into the distance, not meeting his eyes. “Do you believe in things that can't be explained?”

Gareth almost wanted to laugh. “If you'd asked me that a couple months ago, I'd have said there's an explanation for everything if you look hard enough.” He leaned back in the desk chair. “But now, I—I guess I'm not sure.” He glanced at his phone, lying quietly on the desk next to the keyboard.

“I know the feeling,” Wyn said, staring at him as if she could tell what he was thinking. Then, all in a rush, she said, “Listen, what would you say if I told you I have dreams that are true?”

“It depends on what you mean exactly,” he answered cautiously.

“My Gee Gee says it runs in our family. Dreams that mean something.”

“Don't most dreams mean something? They reflect your unconscious thought processes and all.” Gareth had a feeling that wasn't what she was talking about.

“Yes, but … Here's what I mean,” Wyn said, her words spilling over each other. “Lately I started having dreams about the past, about my great-gran, but way before I was born. Before she left Wales. I thought it might be a coincidence. But there's too much detail! I dream about this place I've never seen before, but it seems so real I could touch it. And then when I told Gee Gee about it, it's like she avoided answering any of my questions directly. She told me these tangential stories. When she says she doesn't remember something, I don't even know if she's telling me the truth.” Her shoulders were stiff, and she looked really sad now. Sad and frustrated.

“Okay.” Gareth paused and chose his words carefully. “Whatever it means … do you trust in yourself, in what your unconscious is trying to tell you? Or do you trust in what your gran is saying?”

“Both,” Wyn said without hesitation. “I mean, I trust her, but I have the feeling she's not telling me everything.”

“Well, she's bound to have forgotten some things by now, right?” he pointed out. “It's been a long time.”

“I guess so.” She seemed to relax a little, but she was still frowning.

“You know what's funny? I've been dreaming about Wales too. I guess because we visited there over spring hols. Or because you and I have been talking about it,” Gareth said. He didn't mention that one of his dreams had happened standing up, or that he'd been wide awake a moment before it happened.

“That's kind of uncanny,” Wyn said, staring at him.

“It is,” he agreed. He glanced at the clock in the corner of the screen and had a moment of panic. “I'll have to tell you about it later. I've got to go to school.”

“Email me about it, then.” She sounded intense, interested.

“Will do, cheers.” Gareth disconnected the call, then got up from the swivel chair and pounded upstairs to put on his school clothes. It was hard to believe Wyn was really having psychic dreams, or whatever they were. But not as hard as it might have been a few weeks ago.

Then again … if her great-gran came from Cwm Tawel, maybe she'd visited when she was small and didn't remember, but the images of Wales were still there in her subconscious and coming back in her dreams. Or, he supposed, Wyn could be lying. But she really seemed to be telling the truth, and she didn't seem delusional.

Maybe
he
was delusional. He stared at himself for a moment. His eyes looked a bit tired and droopy, but other than that, he still looked the same. Would he even be able to tell if he was losing it?

Gareth shook his head and pulled on his school jacket. He needed tangible proof of what was happening. Whatever
was
happening. If he asked Wyn to describe the Welsh scenes she saw, or better yet to draw them, and something seemed familiar, he'd know she wasn't having a laugh at his expense. Or would he? After all, she could just go online, find pictures of Cwm Tawel, and copy those. But who would do that? Who would pull a prank so elaborate on someone they didn't even know? It didn't seem likely that she was pulling some sort of a hoax.

He'd just have to decide to trust her.

Grabbing his school bag from the floor in front of the bed, he headed down the narrow staircase and back into the front room, pausing just long enough to send Wyn an email asking for drawings, descriptions, anything she could give him. He sounded a bit desperate—exactly what he'd been hoping to avoid—but he couldn't help it. His sanity, and his character judgment, were at stake.

And he refused to believe he was insane. Either Wyn was exaggerating about the realness of her dreams, or …

… or her dreams
were
real, and if they were, maybe Olwen was, too.

The sun was out, and it was a warm early summer day in North London. Gareth took his usual route home past the park, its green lawn scattered with kids playing and people lounging on deck chairs. This time, though, he didn't stop to look for Amit. They all had exams to study for next week.

That was when Wyn was due to travel to Wales.

He walked faster, eager to get home and check his email. He hadn't been able to stop thinking about her. He wondered if he might be getting obsessive, but when he thought about it all, he was convinced it was more than just chance that had brought them together.

As he crossed the threshold of his front gate, his phone began ringing. He fished it out of his backpack and then frowned. Had Amit changed his ringtone as a joke? It was playing an old Welsh folk tune, one he remembered singing at school when he was really little. “Ar Lan y Môr”—“At the Seaside.” It was a haunting melody, slow, sweet, and wistful.

After a moment, Gareth realized he was still standing half-in and half-out of the garden. He stepped forward and let the gate swing shut behind him.

The melody was still playing, his phone still ringing. He turned it over to see who was calling.

The screen said
Unknown Number
.

This was getting weird. He knew Amit would definitely not go to the trouble to freak him out like this, especially since Amit had no idea he even
was
freaked out to begin with. Maybe it was Wyn? Gareth swallowed hard and pressed the
Talk
button.

“Hello?” His voice sounded strange and high.

Nobody replied. He heard a soft sound like the wind, susurrating gently.

“Hello?” he repeated. “Who's there?” Suddenly he heard what sounded like a child's laugh, far away. Maybe somebody was pocket-dialing him by accident. A wrong number. That had to be it. He pushed the
End Call
button and started moving again, up the front walk, shoving his unease away.

The quiet didn't last long. The phone rang again, and again it played the same melody. This time Gareth picked up right away and said, “Who is this? Is this some kind of joke?” Again, he heard the child laughing somewhere in the background. But this time, weaving over the laughter, was a woman singing softly—the same song. The Welsh words sounding ancient and sad. He opened his mouth to say something more, but nothing came out.

He cleared his throat to try to speak, to give the person one last chance to respond, but before he could talk, the line went dead.

“Okay.” Gareth took a deep breath and let it out forcefully. It was just a wrong number. They'd finally realized their kid was playing with their mobile or something and hung it up. Or maybe it
was
Amit, and he was home laughing right now. Gareth set his bag down next to the front door and hit the speed-dial button.

“Oi, why aren't you at the park?”

“Did you just call me?” Gareth asked.

“Miss me already?” Amit laughed. “No, I didn't call you, G-spot.”

“Right.”

“Is that it? Because Dobbs is about to—oo
f
!” There was a muffled thud, as if the phone had fallen. Gareth hung up. If it hadn't been Amit, then it was probably just a fluke, a random pocket dial. He went to put his phone back into his bag, but something caught his eye.

He looked more closely at the screen. Something was off. It took him a second to realize: it was the background wallpaper. His usual photo of a silver Jaguar F-Type wasn't there. Instead, the screen was showing a different picture, one that was all too familiar. But he knew he hadn't put it there.

It had changed. Or somebody had changed it.

It was the cromlech—the standing stones on the grassy green clifftop. And in the photo was a girl. A small girl who definitely hadn't been in the picture before, sitting on top of the huge capstone and dangling her legs above the opening. She seemed to be laughing.

Gareth shoved the phone into his bag as fast as he could and zipped it shut, his hands shaking.

Inside, he switched on the main computer in the living room, feeling an irrational need to tell Wyn what had just happened. Of course, she didn't know about any of it yet—didn't know about the girl, or the cromlech, or the grave. He'd been waiting to tell her until he could prove it to himself that something supernatural was happening.

Today, with his phone … that was not easy to explain away. It wasn't exactly proof, but it was something.

Trouble was, it really made him sound like a loon. A phantom ringtone? Photos that changed when you weren't looking? How did you talk to someone about that in casual conversation? Dithering, Gareth pulled up Wyn's blog in the web browser.

There was a new entry.

Born to Wyn, June 16, 10:02 p.m.

Still having dreams. Still learning more about
Gee Gee that I didn't know.

During the war, her family took in evacuated children from London and fed them, out in the country where they were supposed to be safer from bombings. Gee Gee was my age, but she helped take care of the kids. She knitted socks for the army. She tended the vegetable garden. But it feels like there was more to it. Something important.

I hope I find out.

Soon we'll be in Cwm Tawel. We'll be in a vacation cottage on the edge of what used to be Gee Gee's uncle's farm, until he sold it after the war. We leave in a handful of days, after school lets out. Despite everything, I'm excited.